再论美国英语语调对美国学生学习汉语声调的干扰

The interforence of English inonation to Mandarin tones perception revisited:the linguistic analysis and the empirical solutions

作者对美国大学生在学习汉语普通话声调时存在的一些根本问题的观点发表后,得到美国国内外学者的赞同.如今大家关心的问题是:对这些存在的问题,是否有解决的办法.在本文中,作者以科学研究和实验的结果,以及个人长期教学的经验为依据,以经典和最新的语言学理论为指导,从语音学的角度、人类在语言习得的不同阶段的特征和对存在问题解决的实施办法三个方面,对这一问题作出了进一步的探讨.

The arguments of the fundamental problems in Mandarin tone acquisition by American college students stated in the article entitled The Interference of American English Intonation Patterns on the Perception of Mandarin Tones by American Students(Chinese Teaching in the World, Vol. 1, 2000) have been well accepted at home and abroad. However, a new question has been raised accordingly: what could be the remedy to those problems, if there is any. It is intended in this article to conduct further discussions on this topic from three major perspectives: 1) a phonetic analysis and comparison of the different ways of pitch employment in Mandarin Chinese tone system and American English intonation system ; 2) a detail discussion of the different developmental stages of language acquisition by human mind in the gradual maturation process of human brain; introducing the new look at the 'origin of representation for speech', which sheds lights on the problems found in tone perception by non-tonal language speakers; and 3) the theoretical ground plans of the remedy to the existing problems. The analyses and discussions in this article are supported by the classic and latest linguistic theories, the results of scientific research and experiments, and the author’s long time teaching experience.