An experimental comparative study on prosodic features between Ningbo EFL learners and American Native speakers—in the case of production of yes-no questions

The present paper investigates the prosodic features of Ningbo EFL learners and American Native speakers through an Praat-assisted acoustic experiment. Based on AM theory, the results are analyzed in terms of accent distribution, intonation pattern and phrase segmentation. Results show that Ningbo EFL learners prefer H* or H*L tone on focus word conditioned by focus showing up in the front end of sentence, which vary considerably from American speakers' L*H tone. Further analysis demonstrated the performance of Ningbo English learners is better when the focus exists in the final boundary of yes-no question. Besides, the intonation patterns are compared as the focus location shift back and forth. Last but not least, the phrase segmentation and phonological description are discussed in the paper to explore the other prosodic properties of two subjects.