Application of Computer Software in Analyzing Sound Acquisition in Modern Standard Chinese

Abstract

E-Prime is a suite of applications to fulfill researchers’ computerized experiment needs. Praat is a free software program for the analysis of speech in phonetics with which phoneticians can analyze, synthesize, and manipulate speech. SPSS is a software program which can be used for doing statistical analysis of the collected data. These computer software programs are applied in the present study which aims to explore the consonant acquisition of Putonghua (Modern Standard Chinese) by native speakers of Uyghur. The difficulty hierarchy of the Chinese consonants for the Uyghur learners of Chinese is found out through the perception experiment. The results of the experiment support the Markedness Differential Hypothesis. In addition, it shows that the second language speech acquisition is influenced by both the first and also the target language phonological system. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.11591/telkomnika.v11i8.3146