A Study on English Word-Final Coronal Stop Deletion by Chinese EFL Learners

Based on the TIMIT corpus and the reading speech of Chinese who learn English as a foreign language (EFL learners), this study investigates the application of word-final t/d deletion by Chinese EFL learners and analyzes the differences of deletion by them and by American native English speakers. This study also examines the impact of English proficiency and Chinese transfer of Chinese EFL learners on the differences. It is found that the overall deletion of word-final t/d in Chinese EFL learners is less active than that in native speakers, and the following segments, parts of speech and gender have similar restrictive effects on both Chinese EFL learners and native speakers. Meanwhile, English learners with higher English proficiency have similar performance on deletion to native speakers of English in the restriction of the preceding segments and gender. Chinese transfer makes the discrepancy of deletion more significant between EFL learners and natives.

Index Terms: t/d deletion, phonological variation, Chinese EFL learners, English proficiency