The Comparative Study On Chinese And English Tone And Intonation

In linguistics, the research on the phonetics usually is in the following three aspects: (1) the description of the pronunciation; (2) the physical characteristics; (3) the reflection of the auditognosis. Linguists have tried various kinds of methods to describe, analyze and study the Chinese and English phonetics respectively, and have obtained some research fruits. However, most of the researches are limited within the respective dissertating on the Chinese tone and English intonation; some research draw the comparative study on the Chinese phonetics, but mixing up the basic conceptions of tone and intonation so as to make the comparative analysis between the Chinese tone and English intonation directly. This paper emphasizes the comparative study of Chinese and English tone and intonation by using the auditory method and analyzing the previous achievements by the former researchers achieved by using auditory apparatus. After analysis and comparison, the author puts forward her own opinion: Chinese language is not only a tone language, but also an intonation language; different from Chinese, English language is merely an intonation language. The writer also summarizes the rules of the changeable Chinese tones: (1) when two shang sheng linked together, the first one should change from Tone 214 to Tone 35; if the second syllable is qing sheng, which is changed from shang sheng, the tone pitch of the first shang sheng will have two different changes: a) in the verb phrase, the first tone will change to Tone 35; b) in the noun phrase, the first tone will change from Tone 214 to Tone 21. (2) When there are three shang sheng linked together, two kinds of changes are adopted according to the different inner structures: when the first syllable is used to decorate the second and the third one, and also the second and the third one compose one word phrase, then the tone pitch of the first syllable should be changed into from Tone 214 to Tone 21 and the second one should change to Tone 35, the last one keeps 214; when the first and the second syllable compose one word phrase, and also they are used to decorate the last word together, then the tone pitches of the former two syllables should change to Tone 35, and the last one should keep Tone 214. This paper also makes an independent discussion on one special form of Chinese tone—the auxiliary word; and draws the comparative research on the particular expressing form of Chinese and English pause—rhyme. By comparative analysis among the Chinese tone and intonation and also the English intonation, this paper gets a conclusion which is different from the previous research: Chinese belongs to a tone language as well as an...