University of california
Download 3.01 Mb.
|
- Navigate this page:
- Results
Beijing ChineseHypothesis and MaterialsSyllables in Beijing Chinese are either open or closed by a nasal /n/ or /N/. The vowel of an open syllable is either long or a diphthong. Most syllables in Beijing are equally stressed. But some monosyllabic reduplicative morphemes and functional words can be destressed, and they can occur word-finally. There are four lexical tones in Beijing: 55, 35, 213 and 51.20 Tones 55, 35, and 51 can occur on any regularly stressed syllables. Tone 213 can only occur on a regularly stressed utterance final syllable; non-finally it is realized as 21. On a final destressed syllable however, only level tones can be realized. These syllables are usually described as having the ‘neutral tone’. Chao (1948, 1968) gives the following description of its realization under different tonal environments: (0) Phonetic realization of the neutral tone in Beijing Chinese: Half-Low after 55: tÓaâ t´.| ‘his’ Mid after 35: ßeIü t´.| ‘whose’ Half-High after 21: niû t´.| ‘yours’ Low after 51: taët´.| ‘big one(s)’
Focusing our attention to the boldface cases in the table, we can see that Beijing exhibits a situation similar to Xhosa. In a disyllabic word, we may find that the penult is stressed, but the ultima is stressless. Thus the penult is subject to lengthening under stress, while the ultima is subject to final lengthening. We may then lay out the hypothesis on rime duration for Beijing Chinese, as in (0). (0) Hypothesis (Beijing Chinese): Non-final regularly stressed syllables have a longer sonorous rime duration than final destressed syllables. The phonetic data of Beijing Chinese were recorded from two male native speakers—ZJ (the author) and LHY. The speaker read the word ma55-ma0 (‘0’ represents a neutral tone) ‘mom’ with ten repetitions. A level-toned first syllable was selected to avoid circularity. As a means of testing for final lengthening alone, the speakers also read the nonsense word ma55-ma55 with ten repetitions. ResultsThe mean vowel duration for the two syllables in ma55-ma0 is shown in the bar plot in (0a). The vowel in the initial position, which has regular stress, has a mean duration of 204ms. The vowel in the final position, which is destressed, has a considerably shorter mean duration—109ms. The error bars again represent one standard deviation. A two-tail paired t-test shows that this difference is highly significant (df=15, t=12.99, p<0.0001). The durational data clearly support the phonetic hypothesis in (0). In Beijing Chinese, regularly stressed syllables are significantly longer than final destressed syllables, even though the stressed syllables do not benefit from final lengthening, while the destressed syllables potentially do. The effect of final lengthening is not immediately obvious in (0a). But it can be observed in durational results obtained from the nonsense word ma55-ma55, shown in (0b). As we can see, when the two syllables are equally stressed, the effect of final lengthening is apparent. A two-tail paired t-test shows that this effect is highly significant (df=15, t=-13.39, p<0.0001). Looking back on the contour tone restrictions in Beijing given in (0), we can see that this lengthening effect is responsible for the final stressed syllables’ ability to host 213—a complex contour tone. (0) Beijing Chinese vowel duration: a. ma55-ma0 (ms): b. ma55-ma55 (ms):  
We can also ask the question: does the final destressed syllable benefit from final lengthening at all? To investigate this, the same two speakers were also recorded reading the phrases shuo55-ma55-ma0 ‘scold mother’ and ma55-ma0-shuo55 ‘mother says’, each with ten repetitions. The vowel durations for ma0 in these two phrases were measured and compared. The ma0 in shuo55-ma55-ma0 has an average vowel duration of 84.7ms, while the ma0 in ma55-ma0-shuo55 has an average vowel duration of 84.5ms: the two are practically identical. Not surprisingly, a two-tail paired t-test shows that the difference is not significant (t=-0.06, df=15, p>0.05). Therefore destressed syllables in Beijing Chinese in fact do not benefit from final lengthening, even though regularly stressed syllables do. At this point, the picture of Beijing Chinese emerges as follows. In the direct approach, the Canonical Durational Categories that are directly relevant to the contour tone restrictions of Beijing Chinese are CDC(-destressed), CDC(-stressed-nonfinal), and CDC(-stressed-final). From the phonetic results, we can represent their durations as x, x+m, and x+m+n (x, m, n >0) respectively. Among all possible CDC’s in Beijing Chinese, these are the ones that correspond to different contour bearing abilities: level tone only on CDC(-destressed), simple contour tones ok on CDC(-stressed-nonfinal), and complex contour 213 ok only on CDC(-stressed-final). And the contour bearing ability of these syllable types is deterimined by the duration of their CDC: the longer the CDC, the greater the syllable’s ability to carry more complex contour tones. For the traditional positional faithfulness approach, a principled account can be achieved if one of the parameters is final lengthening instead of the final position: the final destressed syllable cannot carry contour tones since its tone is not protected by either Ident-Stress(Tone) or Ident-FinalLengthening(Tone). But by referring to final lengthening, this move amounts to acknowledging the effect of duration. The final complication that should be mentioned in Beijing Chinese is that the phonetic studies on neutral tones by Lin (1983), Wu and Lin (1989), and Wang (1996) have shown the the pitches for these tones are not level. Generally, the neutral tones after 55, 35 and 51 are falling to varying degrees, while the neutral tone after 21 is a mid or high-mid level tone. The crucial difference between these pitch changes and real contour tones is that these pitch changes are not used contrastively; i.e., they do not contrast with level tones or each other. These tones have been documented as levels in all phonological literature on Chinese, and this seems to agree with native speakers’ intuition on their values. The answer to the discrepancy between the perceived and actual values of these tones may be found in the extremely short duration of destressed syllables—only slightly over 100ms. Greenberg and Zee (1979) show that if the f0 ramp is only 90ms, the degree of perceived contour will be very small even if the slope of the f0 ramp is high. They further conjecture that the minimal duration for a substantial percept of dynamic pitch is about 130ms—longer than the sonorous rime duration of destressed syllables in Beijing. This explains why there is no contour percept even though there is f0 change during the syllable. As for why there is f0 change at all during such short syllables, I suggest that it results from the interaction between perseverative tonal coarticulation and boundary intonation.
Directory: files files -> Answer True False 2 points Question 2 files -> Integer programming and game theory files -> 4 Integer Programming files -> Bpa vehicle Window Repair Scenario #1 task: Procure vehicle window relacement. Objective files -> Pop Warner History files -> North Carolina Inclusion Initiative Mapping Where Children with ieps are Being Served Purpose files -> Fall 2013 Spring 2014 Program Data: Standard 1 Exhibit 4d files -> Hanban – asia society confucius classrooms network 2010 request for proposal files -> Northern England’s set-jetting locations Download 3.01 Mb. Share with your friends:
|