An Experimental Study On Stress Patterns Of Disyllables In Chongqing Dialect

There is a lasting dispute on word stress in Mandarin Chinese. The argument that whetherChinese can be seen as a stress language has been widely discussed. And scholars have notreached a consensus on its stress patterns. Compared to Mandarin Chinese, the studies on theword stress of other Chinese dialects are quite limited. As to Chongqing dialect, the research ofits word stress has been scarcely touched. Therefore, studying the word stress of Chongqingdialect has both theoretical and practical significances.Based on a phonetic experiment, this paper analyzes the phonetic samples uttered by8native speakers, trying to answer the following two questions:(1) Does word stress exist in Chongqing dialect? Can word stress be perceived by nativespeakers? What are the stress patterns of disyllabic words in Chongqing dialect?(2) What are the acoustic features of disyllabic words in Chongqing dialect? What are thedominant parameters in each tonal pattern?The result shows that word stress does exist in Chongqing dialect. And left stress isdominant in the disyllables of Chongqing dialect. The most effective parameters to influencestress pattern are the highest value of pitch, the range of pitch and pitch contour. Duration andintensity in comparison are not that effective. In different tonal patterns, the most importantacoustic parameters may be different.