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An Acoustic Investigation of Chinese Tone 4 Produced by German Learners

This study investigates the possible errors related to Chinese tone 4 of German learners. Production of short Chinese sentences are produced by 13 German students who have learned Chinese for one year. Evaluation of these productions are conducted by 10 Chinese native speakers. One monosyllabic word and eight disyllabic words with tone 4 segmented from the sentences are compared with those of 5 Chinese native speakers acoustically. Results show that German learners are reluctant to produce tone 4 from the highest level, furthermore they can hardly produce tone 4 in a sharp fall contour as the native speakers. Such deviations bring a German accent when they speak Chinese. Findings can provide implications for cross language studies and foreign language education.