Shaoxing Dialect Tone Experiment Of Declarative And Interrogative Sentences

Based on the Theory of Intonation Patterns,deep and thorough research was conducted on the sound materials?including two sentence types and four moods,totally 384 samples?of Shaoxing dialect intonation.The materials was spoken by four native speakers,through that we can search the rule of the intonation.After analyzing the data,the following conclusions are drawn:There are many similarities between declarative and interrogative sentences in this study.?1?Four types of sentences tend to declination in pitch.In general,people tend to associate interrogative sentences with rising tone,but due to the question words in Shaoxing dialect that share the interrogative mood.Therefore,the intonation of interrogative sentences tends to declination as declarative sentences.?2?The lowest point of the pitch is the end of the sentence.The tone range is expanded to maximization at the end of the sentence.And declarative and interrogative sentences are presented the character of the boundary tone.?3?From the percentage value,the four sentences are not up to 100% at the peak of the tone range.?4?There are negative values in all types of the undulating scale.Throughout every articles,Q values are positive to declarative sentences,obviously with interrogative sentences.But there are negative values in Shaoxing dialect.There are also many differences between declarative and interrogative sentences in the acoustical performance.?1?Three interrogative sentences is greater than the declarative sentences on the tone range.As a whole,the alternative interrogative is the largest,followed by thepositive-negative interrogative,the minimum is specific interrogation.?2?In each of the interrogative sentences,the percentage of each“focus”from big to small:positive-negative interrogative > alternative interrogative> specific interrogation.That is to say,in the expression of the question tone,the order of the expression of the question semantic intensity is: the“V no V”structure,the alternative structure>specific pronoun.?3?From the percentage value,declarative sentences do not reach the minimum of 0% at the lowest point of the tone range,but the interrogative sentences are all reached.?4?From Q₀,the big to the small order is:specific interrogation>positive-negative interrogative>alternative interrogative>declarative sentences.The lines of Q₀ to the declarative sentences are smallest.?5?From the undulating scale of the whole sentence,for the descend range,the declarative sentences are between 20.5 and 27 percent.The positive-negative interrogatives are between 14 and 38 percent,which are the largest.Alternative interrogatives are between 19 and 42 percent with the second.Specific interrogations are between 21 and 39 percent with the third.