A Study Of The Intonation Of The Interrogative Sentence In Mandarin Chinese

This thesis investigates the intonation of the interrogative sentence in Mandarin Chinese from acoustic and perceptive perspectives. In the acoustic analysis, it compares not only the fundamental frequency features between interrogative sentences and declarative sentences but also those among different kinds of interrogative sentences. The results of the statistic analysis are as follows: 1) The intonation of interrogative sentence is expressed by the change of the pitch of the whole sentence rather than by the sentence final pitch alone; 2) The highest and lowest point of the tone nucleus and sentence final intonation in different interrogative sentences are higher than those of the declarative sentences; 3)The difference between the questions in declarative word order and declarative sentence is larger than that between the other kinds of questions (i.e. wh-questions and yes-no questions) and declarative sentence, for the reason that the intonation is the only interrogative marker in the questions; 4) There is distinction in intonation between sentences with interrogative markers (i.e. wh-questions and yes-no questions) and declarative sentences; 5) The divergences in intonation are prominent among sentences with different interrogative sentence final particles. From the perceptive aspect, it analyzes the perception of native speakers of Mandarin Chinese towards the mood of threetypes of sentences of the same syntactic structure--declarative sentence,interrogative sentence whose final particle is cut off and questions in declarative word order. The results are as follows: 1) The cutting of the interrogative sentence final particle creates some difficulties for the subjects to identify interrogative mood; 2) There is a distinct gap between the percentage of the interrogative sentence whose final particle is cut off being judged as declarative sentence and that of declarative sentence. The above results show that in the interrogative sentence where final particle has already carried part of interrogative information, intonation bears less interrogative information although it also expresses certain interrogative mood, which corresponds well to the results of the acoustic analysis.In conclusion, disparities exist in intonation between declarative sentence and interrogative sentences studied in this thesis, which vary in accordance with the types of the interrogative sentences.