Some Issues On Prosodic Phonology: A Comparative Study Between Chinese And English

The dissertation aims to explore the feasibility and applicability of language-universal prosodic hierarchy in Chinese based on the theory of prosodic hierarchy and the definitions of English-specific prosodic hierarchy. In accordance with the end-based theory by Selkirk(1986), I exclusively try to define Chinese prosodic words and Chinese phonological phrases; meanwhile the status of the foot and that of the clitic group in Chinese are analyzed in some detail.The prosodic word may be smaller, bigger or equal to the morpho-syntactic word. In answering that, I claim to extend Selkirk's end-based theory within the word, supporting Cohn (1989) and Rice(1992). I propose a parameter for the prosodic word formation in Chinese. The parameter is handled by the lexical vs. postlexical left edge of a lexical category. Seen from the Chinese-specific phenomena, Chinese word-internal phonological rules are also predictable.In order to derive the phonological phrase in Chinese, I adopt Selkirk's parameter, the left edge of a maximal projection of a lexical category. However, in some cases, there is optional phrasing which does not match phrases derived by the end-based parameter. Therefore, I propose a phonological phrase restructuring depending on the prosodic constituent heaviness, speech rate and pause.The foot reflects the rhythm in stress languages with stressed syllables alternating with unstressed syllables. To the tone languages like Chinese, stress is not a prominent feature. Since stress and the foot are co-existent, there will be the foot iff there is stress; that there is the foot implies that there exists stress in the language. In this case, the foot is not a prominent constituent in Chinese prosodic hierarchy.There have been debates about the clitic group since its birth. In Hayes' view(1989), the monosyllabic functional words are in no position to stand on their own, and must cliticize to the nearest noun, verb or adjective. The clitic group was defined as a single content word together with all the contiguous grammatical words in the same syntactic constituent. The clitic group doesn't necessarily lie between the prosodic word and the phonological phrase based on the different phenomena in different languages. Therefore, firstly the clitic group has no fixed position in the language-universal prosodic hierarchy; in addition, the clitics in Chinese belong to the prosodic words together with the content words in the postlexical level. To sum up, the clitic group has no corresponding status in Chinese prosodic hierarchy.The contributions of the dissertation are as follows:1) The analysis of the prosodic hierarchy in Chinese provides supporting evidence to the theory of prosodic hierarchy;2) The parameter of prosodic word formation advanced in the dissertation--the Chinese prosodic word is defined as the left edge of a lexical head--explains the mismatches of morphological structure and phonological structure in Chinese. This is the first time for the Chinese prosodic word to be defined from the perspective of prosodic phonology;3) The dissertation also supports the hypothesis that phonological structure is independent of syntactical structure, the Chinese phonological phrase is defined as the left edge of the maximal projection of a lexical head. This is also the first time for the Chinese phonological phrase to be defined from the perspective of prosodic phonology;4) The analysis on the status of the foot in Chinese ends the long-standing debate on the left-headed or right-headed foot in Chinese. Since Chinese is a tone language, stress is not a prominent feature. Therefore the foot is not so prominent in Chinese prosodic hierarchy.5) The clitic group is also not so prominent in Chinese prosodic hierarchy, and the function words only cliticize to the nearest content word to form a prosodic word in the postlexical level.6) In the intonational phrase, the 3rd tone sandhi first applies to the level of prosodic words, then cyclically applies to the level of the phonological phrases, finally applies to the level of intonational phrases simultaneously. The claim is a fresh opinion based on the previous research.