1988 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
An Experimental Study of Stress and Tone in Mandarin Chinese
| Project/Area Number |
60450056
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for General Scientific Research (B)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Research Field |
中国語・中国文学
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| Research Institution | Kanagawa University (1987)
The University of Kitakyushu (1985-1986) |
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Principal Investigator |
NASU Kiyoshi Faculty of Foreign Languages, Kanagawa University, 外国語学部, 教授 (90038381)
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| Project Period (FY) |
1985 – 1987
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| Keywords | Mandarin / Tone / Stress |
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| Research Abstract |
i. Stress
(1) Mandarin Chinese has both stress accent and tone (pitch accent). "Qinsheng" is an unstressed syllable and has no proper tone and is usually short. One of the difficulties in describing Chinese prosody is how to treat "Qinsheng" in which pitch, stress, and length are all intermingled. The hitherto held views are roughly the following three: (i) it accompanies stress accent; (ii) it relates to both tone and stress accent; (iii) it is a kind of tone, hence Mandarin Chinese has five tone levels. In the 1950's another view based on an experimental study was advanced that the quality of "Qinsheng" lies not in stress but in length. Yet another theory has been put forward that, although "Qinsheng" is generally considered to be an enclytic syllable, there are some cases in which it is a proclitic syllable, which fact was confirmed by our experiment.
(2) Dissyllabic words usually have their second syllable stressed, but in some sentencesthe stress shifts to the first syllable. The phenomenon is conceivably not contrast-emphasis but rhythm stress.
ii. Tone and Intonation
(1) It is often pointed out that, of the four tones, Tone-2 and Tone-3 are similar, but in ordinary discourse the sound shape of the two tones is frequently reversed. Our experiment also shows that in ordinary discourse each of the four tones can be level tone, namely the same as tone-1.
(2) According to Professor Y. R. Chao, the relationship between tone and sentence intonation is represented by two methods: simultaneous addition and successive addition. Our experiment confirmed the former, but did not verify the latter. It remains to be explored how tone is influenced by intonation.
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