An Experimental Study On The Parameter Dependent Metrical Patterns Of Disyllabics In Natural Speech

In linear phonology of SPE, stress is assumed to be an absolute property of sound segments while it is considered as a relative prominence among syllables in non-linear phonology. As one of the most important prosodic features, stress has been examined extensively in stress-timed languages, like English, but so far has attracted inadequate attention in tone languages such as Chinese.On the basis of Hayes's parameter-dependent metrical stress theory, this thesis presents an experimental study with the aim of investigating the most common stress pattern as well as stress assignment rules in a tone language. Weifang dialect is selected to be the target language for the case study and the experimental data processing is all done by software Praat.According to the perceptual experiment, there exist the differences between left-dominant feet and right-dominant feet in Weifang dialect and left dominancy tends to be the main stress pattern of disyllabic sequences in Weifang dialect. The acoustic experiment reports that duration, pitch and intensity are the three necessary acoustic parameters in distinguishing the stressed syllables from the unstressed ones in Weifang dialect. Among them, duration plays the most important role and then pitch and intensity which are consistent with the general rules of tone languages.Guided by Hayes's parameter-dependent metrical theory, this thesis assumes that stress of the disyllabics in Weifang dialect constructs from right to left and forms left-dominant feet. As a bounded language, Weifang dialect is characterized by quantity-sensitive feet. This conclusion verifies the interpretability of the parameter-dependent metrical theory. Besides, it is also suggested that the stress pattern of a word is not simply consistent with the metrical edges, the morph syntactic structures do have a close relation with metrical structures of Weifang dialect.In addition, a fully study and research of the stress pattern of the dialects is also of great significance to the knowing understanding of the typical problems and difficulties of L2 learners based on a comparative study which will provide references and scientific guidance for the acquisition of the second language.