Metrical Stress In Changsha Chinese

This thesis aims at developing an analysis of the metrical stress in Changsha Chinese, a sub-dialect of the Xiang Dialects of Chinese, within the framework of metrical theories.Up till now, the data of Changsha Chinese are mainly auditorily based and focus on the segments and tones. Neither phonetic experiment nor phonological analysis has been done on the metrical structure in this dialect. This thesis is to report the acoustic properties of the stressed and unstressed syllables in disyllabic and trisyllabic sequences of Changsha Chinese based on the fieldwork and the phonetic experiments conducted in 2006; to present the metrical structures within the framework of metrical theory based on the phonetic facts obtained in the acoustic experiment; and to analyze the relation between the metrical structure and the morpho-syntactic structures in Changsha Chinese.Audio recordings were made of 7 native speakers of Changsha Chinese. The test words are mainly divided into three groups: 30 monosyllabic words in citation forms, 1436 words in disyllabic sequences in consideration of the 36 (6*6) possible combinations, and 233 words in trisyllabic sequences. Data recordings, annotations and pitch modifications of the test syllables were done with the help of software Praat 4．2．17．The statistic computations including converting F0 values into pitch values were all conducted in SPSS 12．From the perspective of experimental phonetics, duration is the most essential properties of stressed syllables. The stressed syllables take about 60% of the whole disyllabic length and are 20-60% longer in duration than the unstressed syllables. The unstressed syllables take only about 40% of the whole disyllabic length. In tri-syllabic sequences, stress usually resides on the first or the last syllable that takes 40-50% of the whole tri-syllabic length.The pitch ranges of the stressed syllables, which are similar to the average pitch range of the six citation tones, are greater than the unstressed ones. Furthermore, the stressed syllables also show higher maximum pitch values than the unstressed unexceptionally. The pitch contours of the stressed syllables are more similar to the citation tone, while the pitch contours of the unstressed syllables usually change either from its original level to falling, or from rising to level or even falling. The tone value of the six tones (23, 13, 41, 45, 21, 24) in the unstressed syllables tends to be level (22, 33, 44) . In the tri-syllabic sequences, the level tendency of the tones in the least stressed syllable, which is usually the second syllable in a string, is more obvious.Intensity and vowel qualities do not distinguish the stressed from unstressed. The unstressed syllables may have higher intensity. However, energy, the product of intensity and the duration, changes with stress. More energy means more stress.There are left-dominant feet and right-dominant feet in Changsha Chinese. The left or right dominance of a foot is determined by its morpho-syntactic structure. Under the NHS theory by Duanmu, the syntactic non-heads attract more stress. This thesis also testifies that essentially the morpho-syntactic structure confines the metrical structure at least at the foot level. The metrical structure tends to be right strong above the foot level.In the present study, it provides a detailed phonetic description of the stressed and the unstressed syllables in the sequences with 2-3 syllables. But the further acoustic study should be carried out on the stress patterns in larger domains. In addition, an OT account of the metrical structure of Changsha Chinese as well as the interrelation between the lexical tone and the metrical stress in tone languages should be the subject of further study.