A Phonetic And Phonological Study On Chinese Intonation From A Multi-Dimensional Perspective

While previous studies on Chinese intonation have been focused much on thedelicate description of the pitch contour within an utterance, this dissertation, basedon a macro viewpoint of intonation, examines the relation among the three prosodicelements, the distributional patterns of pitch duration and intensity, intonationalcategories and other related topics. Results and preliminary findings are as follows.I．Characteristics of Chinese intonation and its research methodWe argue that the Chinese intonation bears at least the features of duality,multi-dimension and continuity. By duality, it refers to the fact that a syllable has arelative pitch height in its utterance context as well as an absolute one within aspeaker’s register. Intonation is being multi-dimensional in that besides pitch, otherprosodic elements like duration and intensity also make contribution to intonation andthus should also be taken into account. By continuity, it means there is a continuum ofchange among different types of intonation. Accordingly, the methods of dual andmulti-dimensional analysis and the analysis by means of continuum can be employedwhen working with Chinese intonation.II. The relationship among three prosodic elementsThe analysis on175utterances of five syllables in the continuums of duration,pitch and intensity produced by two speakers shows a different directionality ofcorrelation among three prosodic elements. Generally, when duration increases, thepitch and intensity decrease; when pitch elevates, the intensity will increasesignificantly, and vice versa, demonstrating a bi-directional positive correlationbetween the two; but no steady incidental changes occurs to duration when pitch orintensity increase. This result indicates a difference with Wu（2004）’s view that thereexists a one-way positive relation between duration and pitch, and between durationand intensity.The prosodic element of duration is of the highest degree of independence,followed by pitch and intensity. The connection between pitch and intensity is the closest among the three, and intensity shows a strong reliance on pitch. The incidentalvariation of every two elements might also be affected by the third one as well astonal type.The hierarchies of both duration and intensity go up in a non-linear way, whereas,pitch tends to increase linearly in either Hz or semitone scale. Consider that the pitchis perceived non-linearly （Li2005）, we postulate that the production and perceptionof pitch might follow different cognitive patterns, and so do the three prosodicelements. The study also suggests an influence on the number of hierarchy from thetype of tone.III. The continuum of intonation and intonational featuresWe hold that the various types of Chinese intonation are both continuous anddiscrete, thus approaches of “continuum and features” are to be adopted accordingly.An analysis on a speaker’s92utterances which contain19types of intonationsuggests that these types constitute a continuum in each dimension---duration, pitchand intensity. The acoustic boundaries of [high],[mid] and [low] in each dimensionare categorized by two listeners, which are then assigned as global features for26types of intonation. This approach can well reflect people’s linguistic intuition.Restrictions on the selection and combination of these global features comemainly from an extrinsic factor---the communicative principle of explicitness and anintrinsic one---the constraint of physical realization, with the former disallows thecooccurrence of a [low] duration and [low] pitch, while the latter forbids assigningopposite values to pitch and intensity, revealing a contradiction between thesymmetry in phonological analysis and the unbalance in phonetic implementation.IV. The duration and intensity patterns of intonationThe analysis on two speakers’365utterances suggests that intonation unitdisplays a state of steadiness not only in its pitch contour （Wu2004） but also in itsduration pattern, which might be, based on the prosodic unit, restricted firstly bypositional constrains followed by constrains from types of intonation and tones.i. Positional constrainsi) With a larger range of variation, the final syllable of an intonation unit isalways longer than non-final ones, which are given stronger positional restriction. The durational pattern of two-syllabic group is “short-long” and the tri-syllabicpattern “short-short-long”.ii) The principle of durational declination, ie. the average pitch duration of eachintonation unit declines in an utterance, stated as “AVE(D_L1+(D_M1)+D_R1)≧AVE(D_L2+(D_M2)+D_R2)≧AVE(D_L3+(D_M3)+D_R3)…”，where “D” stands for durationand “L, M, R” stands for the left, middle and right position of an intonation unit.iii) The degree of constrain might follow the order of “final syllable of non-finalmajor prosodic unit＜final syllable of the utterance＜final syllable of non-finalminor prosodic unit＜beginning syllable of prosodic word＜non-boundarysyllables of non-final prosodic word” from weak to strong.ii. Constrains from intonational typeThe significant difference in terms of the duration of the final syllable of anutterance indicates its intonational function. A disparity between prosodic andsyntactic structures is also observed. The ending syllables at phrasal and sententiallevels might carry mainly emotional and grammatical function respectively. Thefeature of lengthening might be optional or compulsory in different positions of anutterance. An significant difference exists among four functional types of intonationwhen the duration of the ending syllable and the last prosodic phrase is measured.iii. Constrains from tonal typeSimilar patterns have been observed between Tone2（T2, rising） and T4（falling）utterances, and between T1（high） and T3（low） utterances, providing an evidence fromintonation for Shi （2011）’s argument that T3in Chinese is essentially low.Being opposite to the durational pattern, both intensity （I） and pitch （P） followthe rule that the final syllable of a prosodic unit is weaker/lower than non-final tones,stated as I_L﹥I_M﹥I_R, P_L﹥P_M﹥P_R. The resetting of intensity is observed at thebeginning tone of every prosodic unit. The global declination of intensity is lessobservable than that of pitch and duration. Besides having a long duration, theboundary tone of the prosodic unit carries the features of low pitch and intensity.The linguistically significant approximation to the targets in each dimensionmight start at different points in an utterance. The exclamatory intonation might start at the very beginning or the subject of the sentence, the imperatives starts at the firstsyllable of the final verbal phrase （usually a verb）, and the interrogative intonationstarts at the last accented tone of the utterance.V. The acoustic and perceptional categories of intonationThe chart that illustrates the acoustic pattern of four functional types ofintonation in pitch dimension shows that the intonation of statements and imperativesfalls into the class of low register intonation, while the interrogative and exclamatorytypes belong to the high register, reflecting a balance within the system. Anoverlapping area of about2semitones’ range is observed for these two registers.However, a further analysis shows that the tonal level of both interrogative andimperative intonation might be floating, thus making their features of [high] and [low]into a relative one, while the [low] and [high] features of statements and exclamationsare of absolute characteristics. This might be the reason why a discrepancy does existfor the outcomes of acoustic and perceptional experiments. The acoustic pattern is notnecessarily in accord with the perceptional one.A further perceptional experiment indicates that the element of duration makesthe greatest contribution when synthesizing an imperative intonation from astatement.IV. Theoretical reflectionsDue to the physical and biological constrain, the declination of intonation occursnot only in pitch dimension, but also in duration and intensity. Declination is not thenature or underlying form of Chinese intonation, it is actually a surface phoneticrealization; it is neither a specific feature for Chinese intonation, rather, it is auniversal linguistic phenomenon across languages.The specific feature of Chinese intonation lies in a special relation between itstone and intonation, two of which are actually interacting with each other,constituting a continuum as “citation tone---tone sandhi---neutral intonation---emotional intonation---calling tone---singing tone”, in which the right-ending formshows the highest status of sentential intonation and the lowest status of citation tone.The feature geometry is proposed so as to learn more about the distinctionbetween tone and intonation. Features are grouped into global and local ones. The former, functioning mainly in emotional expression, includes [high][mid][low] ineach dimension as well as [broad] and [narrow] for the parameter of register; localfeatures include [accented],[abrupt falling],[rising] and [lengthening], which arerelated to the semantic and grammatical function.The process from intonation generation to perception involves psychological,physiological and physical sub-processes. A certain type of intonation may be realizedas typical and untypical forms. A finite state grammar of Chinese intonation istentatively proposed and positional constrains are summarized.