美国英语母音走向之探讨.pdfVIP

美國英語母音走向之探討 The Movement of the Vowel in American English 劉 慶 剛 Ching Kang Liu 國立台北大學應用外語學系副教授 Associate Professor, Department of Foreign Languages and Applied Linguistics National Taipei University 1 Tamkang Studies of Foreign Languages and Literatures 中文摘要 本文旨在探討英文母音之音域，及長、短母音更精確之語音特質。舌位之 高低一直被視為引導母音發音之重要因素 ，然而本研究發現 ，同一音域中之長、 短母音其實存在更具分辨性之語音特質 ：母音的走向 。這個發現可以立即破解英 語學習者一向認為長母音發長 ，短母音發短的迷思 ，也可讓英語學習者有更明確 的資料 ，藉以判定學習者發出之英語母音之正確性 ，更可提高英語學習者對語音 辨識的信心。 關鍵詞： 英語母音、音域、母音走向 Abstract This study examines the space of English vowels and how each pair of tense-lax vowels can be distinguished on the basis of precise phonetic qualities. The positions or heights of the tongue have been widely reported and believed to be factors that determine the production of a vowel. However, data in this study show that there is another feature that makes the tense-lax vowels more distinguishable—the tense vowel and lax vowel in the same phonetic space move in very different directions, mostly opposite to each other. This finding may help EFL learners in two aspects: (1) They no longer need to worry about whether the tense vowel should be pronounced longer in time than the lax vowel; and (2) they can have a set of precise data to use as a base when they have to check whether they have produced the English vowels satisfactorily. To conclude, awareness of this feature may be beneficial to Taiwanese EFL learners both in grasping the subtle differences of