A Comparative Study On Chinese And English Prosodic Hierarchies From The Perspective Of Metrical Phonology

Metrical Phonology, which focuses on stress and meter, and Prosodic Hierarchy, which pays attention to the connection between phonetics and syntax, are two important non-linear theories in the study of phonology. Metrical Phonology emphasizes that stress is not fixed features of vowels. Instead, stress indicates a kind of relation which can be expressed by metrical tree and metrical grid. Besides, Metrical Phonology aims at finding out the relative relationship among different segments. The comparison of Chinese and English prosodic hierarchies with the help of Metrical Phonology can provide a clear and systematic analysis of similarities and differences of the Chinese and English prosodic hierarchies at each level. The prosodic hierarchy can be divided into mora, syllable, foot, prosodic word, clitic group, prosodic phrase, intonational phrase and utterance. In this study, the author tries to analyze and compare the Chinese and English prosodic hierarchies at each level with Chinese and English formal and informal materials through metrical tree and metrical grid, aiming to find out the similarities and differences between Chinese and English of each category of the prosodic hierarchy.The data comes from Report on the Work of the Government in China and State of the Union Address in America, an interview of Song Dandan in Yang Lan One on One and an interview of Hilarie in Yang Lan One on One, the TV series Home with Kids in Chinese and Modern Family in English, from which the studied data is randomly chosen. There are five examples at each level of Chinese and English prosodic hierarchies respectively. In the sonority-based prosodic hierarchical analysis, the data is analyzed through the metrical tree to reflect the relative prominence of each part; in the morphosyntax-based and focus-based prosodic hierarchical analyses, the longer elements are studiesd with the metrical grid for convinence of the study.The contrastive analysis of Chinese and English prosodic hierarhchies indicates: Chinese and English have the same prosodic hierarchical levels, such as syllable, prosodic word, prosodic phrase, intonational phrase and utterance, but they do have differences at each level. In the sonority-based prosodic hierarchical analysis, the components of syllable structures of English are more complicated than the ones of Chinese. As for mora and foot, they are two less important units in Chinese prosodic hierarchy compared with English prosodic hierarchy; in the morphosyntax-based prosodic hierarchical analysis, divisions of prosodic words and phonological phrases of Chinese and English are different; in the focus-based prosodic hierarchical analysis, Chinese and English intonational phrases and utterances have different emphasizing points to determine what is new information in the intonational phrase or utterance. This study not only has great reference for further study from the perspective of theoretical application, but also is helpful for deeper understanding of similarities and differences of Chinese and English prosodic hierarchies from the perspective of pedagogy.