Stress Patterns Of Dissyllabic Words In Beijing Dialect

This paper is about the word stress pattern of Beijing dialect, aiming to explain the lasting disputes on stress related questions in Chinese language. The argument that whether Chinese can be seen as a stress language has been widely discussed. This word stress related issue is threefold. First, light syllable/neutral tone words aside, is there perceptible prominence in each part of any disyllable words? Second, if there is, is the stress pattern fixed in all disyllable words?Third, if the stress pattern is fixed, just as it is in English, which syllable, the former one or the latter one, carries the stress? If the stress pattern is free, how many possible patterns are there in Chinese?This paper conducts two distinct experiments to test these above questions. Based on the phonetic samples uttered by 8 Beijing dialect native speakers, and the judgements made by 15 other native speakers, we can make the conclusion that there is perceptible prominence in certain syllable of disyllabic words. Also, acoustic correlates are found in these prominent syllables, including length, intensity, highest pitch, the curve and range of tone. Analysis based on different tone patterns shows distinctive features differ from tone patterns to tone patterns. Listening experiment indicates four different types of stress patterns in dissyllabic words in Beijing dialect, high-low, which is widely accepted as light syllable, high-medium, high-high, medium-high.