Analysis Of The Pitch Of Whispered Words Of Mandarin

It is generally agreed in the linguistic circle that light tone is characterized by its pitch and length. However, up to now, there are still lots of debates on the pitch of light tone. This thesis attempts to measure the pitches of some Chinese phrases with light tones from a perspective of experimental phonetics, trying to find out the pitch-changing principles among them.Starting from the definition and occurrence law of light tones, the author first raises the controversial term"modified tone"in linguistic studies and points out the significance of the present study. Some phrases of light tones are selected and taken as the research object, and the research method on tone is applied to the pitch study on some light tone phrases. Based on the pitch-changing principles in phrases without light tones, this thesis explores the characteristic of those with light tones.Usually there are two syllables in a light tone-phrase and the law of pitch-changing is achieved by comparing a lot of phonetic figures. Generally speaking, when the first syllable is of a falling-rising tone, the pitch of light tone is of a half falling-rising tone. If the light tone syllable is behind a high and level tone, its pitch should be a tone of 41; if it is behind a rising tone, its pitch should be 51;if it is behind a falling-rising tone, its pitch should be 33;if it is behind a falling tone, its pitch should be 10.In fact, the pitch-changing in light tone phrases is quite complicated and it might be affected by some other factors. The thesis has proved that there do exist principles in the pitch-Changing of light tone phrases for people to fallow, and the principles obtained in the present study present study represent the leading ones.