ERROR ANALYSIS OF TONE PATTERN OF CHINESE MONOSYLLABIC TONES PRODUCED BY PAKISTANI STUDENTS

Abstract

Chinese is heavily tone based language. Importance of tone in Chinese can be realised by the fact that most of the semantic makeup of Chinese language is heavily dependent on tone variation. This means a Chinese syllable takes it’s meaning with the help of the tone it is allotted. The tone in Chinese is just like the phoneme of English. Foreigners face considerable amount of difficulty while learning Chinese language tones. But, after a period of time and repeated practice, most people can acquire quite an agreeable pronunciation of the four tones: Yin Ping (1stTone), Yang Ping (2ndTone), Shang Sheng (3rdTone), Qu Sheng (4thTone). The focus of the present study is on the Mono tone of Chinese which is the static form of tone and the basis of dynamic change of tone. This
study reports the errors committed by Pakistani students in the production of Chinese mono tone. The acoustic performance of mono-character tone is mainly reflected in the tonal pattern, tonal value and duration. The present research uses the experimental phonetics software system to analyse the tone types and tone values of Chinese single tones of Pakistani students, and also finds out the errors of Chinese tone made by them. Moreover, it puts forward the correct solutions for students and then provide help for the teaching of Chinese tones for Pakistani students.