Neutral Tone In Standard Chinese:the Phonological Analysis Of Neutral Tone In Standard Chinese

Neutral tone is a very important language phenomenon in Chinese. It is also a structural functional unit and a way to distinguish meanings in Chinese. The study of neutral tones in Chinese is becoming more and more focused and emphasized since Yuanren Chao first proposed the concept of neutral tones in his work Guo Yu Luo Ma Zi Yan Jiu (the Study of Romanization of Chinese). This thesis divides neutral tones in Standard Chinese into different groups and analyzes each group from a phonological way. It is hoped that this thesis can have certain contribution to the development of Chinese linguistics study and to the Chinese normalization and teaching.Firstly the author mainly talks about the research meaning and its current research situation abroad and at home. By analyzing the current research situation, it is found that the previous studies on neutral tones are almost focused on the phonetics of the neutral tones and therefore there are some aspects to break through. This thesis chooses the phonological aspect and tries to analyze and explain the underlying representation of neutral tones in Standard Chinese.Then some basic theories of tone phonology are given. First is the application of autosegmental theory of tones in Standard Chinese. Autosegmental phonology is first proposed by John Goldsmith in his doctoral thesis in1976and he says that phonological representation consists of not only one linear sequence of segments, with each liner sequence constituting of one separate tier. The same segments in different tier are associated with lines. And then different kinds of tone transcriptions are given and analyzed. Next the author gives the phonetic correlates of tones and thus has the two features of tones raised and shows how tone is carried on every syllable by the Tone Bearing Unit.By using the theories given, the author analyzes neutral tones in Standard Chinese. All those neutral tone words are divided into six categories:neutral tones in pseudo-compound, distinguishing entries, reduplicated expressions, words with certain suffixes, pure words and other disyllabic words. Each category is analyzed in detail and has a hypothesis and a conclusion.At last, the author concludes the main findings of this thesis and raises some problems and suggestions for further study.