The Phonetic Manifestations Of Anaphora In Chinese Reading Texts

The present research, which is the first of its kind, aims to investigate discourseanaphora in Chinese from the phonetic point of view. Phonetic experiments andstatistical analysis are conducted to approach the research goal, taking stress degree,fundamental frequency (F0) and pause duration as research parameters.The main findings are: i) for zero anaphora, the boundary syllable after the zeroanaphoric form is more accented, and for the two types of zero anaphora concerned inthe research, the boundary syllable after distant zero anaphoric form is more accented;the boundary syllable before immediate zero anaphoric form is more accented; theduration of the pause before immediate zero anaphoric form is shorter. ii) Forpronominal anaphora, the phonetic manifestation of the third personal pronominalanaphoric form “ta” is closely related with its syntactic position; there are preferredstress patterns of “ta” and its surrounding syllables at varied syntactic positions;rhetoric expression and information structure are important influential factors. iii) Fornominal anaphora, the nominal anaphoric form is less accented than the antecedent;the duration of the pause before the antecedent is significantly longer than that beforethe nominal anaphoric form. Based on the above results, the thesis proposed a view ofunderlying syllable weight projection for zero anaphora; it also discussed pronominalanaphora and discourse prosody, as well as the pragmatic function of stress and pausein Chinese reading texts.This empirical research is on the interface between the phonetic level and thelevels of syntax, semantics and pragmatics. It will be a valuable contribution to theexisting literature and will further the understanding of Chinese anaphora from thephonetic perspective. The findings will also promote the research on Chinesediscourse prosody and contribute to the speech synthesis of Chinese discourse.