Praat Software and Its Application to Analyze Sound Acquisition in Mandarin Chinese

Praat is a free scientific software program for the analysis of speech in phonetics with which phoneticians can analyze, synthesize, and manipulate speech. In the present study, the acquisition of Mandarin Chinese stop consonants by native speakers of Uygur are analyzed by the software Praat. The results of the analysis indicate that Mandarin Chinese voiceless aspirated and unaspirated stop consonants as two phonemic categories can be distinguished by native speakers of Uygur. They can produce voiceless unaspirated stop consonants as authentically as Han Chinese speakers. However, they can not produce voiceless aspirated stops as Han Chinese speakers from the analysis of voice onset time. Moreover, the production of voiceless aspirated stop consonants by Uygur and Han Chinese speakers have not been affected by the speaking rate. The results of the experiment support the Speech Learning Model. In addition, it shows that the second language speech acquisition is restricted by the first language phonological system.