An Experimental Study of the Positive Transfer of Cantonese Rusheng Syllable Structures on Unreleased Stops in English

Abstract

Accurate pronunciation is of great significance for all language learners. Syllables of Rusheng, a prominent feature of Cantonese tones, are ended by stops with no audible release /p̚/, /t̚/, and /k̚/, which is highly similar to the phenomenon of unreleased stops in English Consonant-Consonant linking. However, previous studies on stops in Cantonese and English focused on the onsets or codas stops in monosyllabic words or theoretically presumed the difficulties Cantonese EFL learners may encounter by analyzing the similarities and differences of vowels and consonants in Cantonese and English. Therefore, the author conducted an experiment among three language groups. The results identify that there is a positive transfer from Cantonese Rusheng on English unreleased stops in phrases or even sentences in natural speech.