A Narrative Inquiry into The comparisons of Englis.doc

A Narrative Inquiry into The comparisons of English and Chinese intonation Candidate:Yunxi 云曦school:Harbin Institute of TechnologySpecialty:Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics邮编:150001 地址哈尔滨市 南岗区 西大直街 92号 AbstractEnglish and Chinese are in different language families, and they are also two totally different languages. The study of intonation has existed for a long time. The importance for the study of intonation lies in that foreign language learner always transfer their native language into the process of learning the target language. Chinese speak English in a way of Chinglish, while when foreigner speak Chinese they would make some pragmatic mistakes because of negating the change of intonation. So, the study of intonation plays an important role in the communication which the foreigners use a different language. The study of intonation not only plays a crucial role in the avoidance of making mistakes in cross cultural communication, but also promotes the development of phonetics and teaching method of phonetics, which has an important theoretical and practical meaning in the process of studying linguists. Keywords: intonation, stress, semantic, pragmatic, negative transfer This simple comparison makes a very important point about how we speak and use English or Chinese. It is believed that, English is considered as a stressed language while many other languages are considered as syllabic, such as, Chinese. What does that mean? It means that, we use stress to certain words in English while other words are quickly spoken. In other languages, such as French or Italian, each syllable receives equal importance. What more, Chinese is considered as a tone language which has four totally different tones. For example, 妈 马 骂 麻 are words with totally different meaning but with same syllables. In terms of stressThe meaning of Chinese words is determined by the tone of each word, sentence stress is generally not affect by the meaning of the sentence. However, in English, the meaning of words in English is determined by the placement of stress.In English, there are grammatical function words, such as verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and these words usually uttered with strong stress. While, some function words, such as, pronouns, prepositions, articles, conjunctions, auxiliary, read not in a strong way. And the verb may have their own lexical meaning which is not strong reading, to read insignificantly as Pianissimo. For example: I'm a 'teacher, and my' mother is a 'worker.In the process of English learning, many Chinese may have negative transfer, Chinese learner may read sentences in English in a way of same weight, which lack rhythm and read like their mother tongue. When they read English sentences, they will add an accent in front of each word, and have read every word which well fall behind Tune. For example, She is a good student. Attending to: 'She ' is 'a ' good 'student. In terms of pragmatic and semanticThe role of intonation is to express lexical and syntactic structure of the sentences. Although the intonation is often accompanied with personal feelings, this is essentially, it is a convention, a regular system. In English, because of the tone of the reason, the phase has the same grammatical structure will have different pragmatic meaning, Pragmatic functions can also be considered as a praise, but if you use a rising tone, you may have questions about, surprise, doubt pragmatic meaning, as possible What kind of situation, depending on the context of the time and the relationship between the two sides of communication. That is, when considering the significance of discourse, the researcher can not fail to consider this factor of tone. Because different tone can also cause changes in meaning. Such as: This is her car.ConclusionIntonation, as being the essential and crucial element and external form of a languages, serves the human beings primarily as a medium of communication. After the comparison, the distinctions between English and Chinese intonation are also explored. Since English intonation determines the pitch movements of its utterances, various aspects of pitch are changed flexibly. However, in Chinese, the pitch movements for intonation purpose are confined by the limits of tone-pattern that guarantees the identification of lexical meaning. Intonation, as being the essential and crucial element and external form of a languages, serves the human beings primarily as a medium of communication. References(1)G,Leech & J. Svartvik. A Communicative Grammar of English. Longman, 1974: 38-39(2)Lado, Robert. Linguistics Across Cultures, Applied Linguistics Language Teachers. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1957(3) 龚卡佳.英汉语调对比教学【J .现代外语,19 91(4) Rod Ellis Understanding Second Language AcquisitionM Oxford University Press，1985(5) 李瑞华 英汉语言文化对比M 上海: 上海外语教育出版社，1996