Chinese by Jerry Norman

Author:Jerry Norman
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2014-10-25T16:00:00+00:00

6.7Stress and intonation

Some people assume that because Chinese is a tone language it cannot have the sort of intonational patterns found, for example, in English. They apparently think that pitch cannot function at the lexical level (tone) and at the syntactic level (intonation) at the same time. But this is not so. In fact, in addition to tone, Standard Chinese possesses both stress and intonation.

In the most widely accepted analysis of stress, three degrees are recognized (Chao 1968, 35): normal, weak and contrastive. Normal stress is characterized by the presence of a perceptible tonal contour, but it lacks the exaggerated duration and intensity of syllables carrying contrastive stress. In a sequence of syllables all having normal stress, the strongest phonetic stress falls on the last syllable, the second strongest on the first syllable and the weakest on the intervening syllables. These varying degrees of normal stress are completely predictable, and can hence be considered allophones of a single stress phoneme.

Contrastive stress has a wider pitch range and greater intensity than normal stress and can occur anywhere in a sequence of syllables. For example, in the phrase yŭyán yánjiūsuŏ ‘linguistics institute’ the normal pattern would require the strongest stress to fall on suŏ, the last syllable, the second strongest stress on yŭ, the first syllable, and so on. If contrastive stress is placed on yŭ, however, the normal pattern is displaced and the strongest stress is shifted to yŭ.

Weakly stressed syllables (qīngshēngzì) are variously known as neutral tones, atonic syllables or weak syllables. The term “neutral tone” implies that weakly stressed syllables are a kind of “fifth tone”. From both a synchronic and a diachronic perspective, this is misleading. Unlike the four basic tones, weakly stressed syllables cannot be pronounced in isolation; when an element which normally has weak stress is cited in isolation, as for example when a teacher of grammar discusses a certain particle like le or ba, it must be supplied with a tone (usually a first tone). Moreover, the phonetic value of a weakly stressed syllable is determined almost entirely by the tone of the preceding syllable. Historically, such syllables may come from any of the Middle Chinese tones, and even synchronically they can usually be connected with tonic morphemes which occur in other combinations.

Weak syllables are very short in duration and have a very reduced tone range; the pitch of such syllables is determined by the preceding tone: it is half-low after the first tone, mid pitch after a second tone, half-high after a third tone, low after a fourth tone. In two-syllable combinations followed by a pause the contour is slightly falling, but other contours may occur in more complex tonal environments. Weakly stressed syllables are also characterized by a number of other phonetic features. The unaspirated consonants, which are voiceless when they occur in syllables with normal or contrastive stress, become fully voiced in weakened position. In rapid speech the following reductions may take place: the retroflex affricates and fricatives may become r and

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