Prosodic Indicators Of Formulaic Sequences In Rehearsed Speech:A Comparative Study Of English And Chinese

The studies on formulaic sequences have been widely witnessed around the world and the primary method of investigating formulaic sequences is text-based analysis.A few previous studies do touch upon the prosody of formulaic sequences,but the majority of those studies confine themselves to certain narrowly-defined formulaic sequences or some particular prosodic indicator.Thus empirical studies of wider scale have rarely been witnessed,which is especially true of the prosodic indicators of formulaic sequences in rehearsed speech.Moreover,studies are indeed scarce which target the comparison between two languages in terms of the prosodic indicators of formulaic sequences.The present study,therefore,investigates the prosodic indicators of formulaic sequences in rehearsed speech in English and Chinese as well as the comparison between these two languages in terms of formulaic sequences' prosodic indicators.By turning to existent theoretical framework of prosody and formulaic sequences,the present study attempts to reveal the tonality and tonicity patterns of formulaic sequences in rehearsed speech by selecting conversations in TV episodes as the informal style of language and speeches as the formal style of language and utilizing Praat for prosodic annotation of the selected materials.Comparative work was done to reveal the universality and individuality of languages in terms of prosodic indicators of formulaic sequences in rehearsed speech.The major findings revolve around two dimensions:tonality and tonicity.First and foremost,the investigation of tonality patterns reveals that formulaic sequences in rehearsed speech in English and Chinese are usually found within intonation units and the overwhelming majority of those formulaic sequences are free from pauses in the middle,and this finding uncovers the storage and retrieval of formulaic sequences as a whole in rehearsed speech.By the comparison between English and Chinese,it is found that sentence builders in Chinese rehearsed speech are more frequently interrupted by pauses and these pauses mark independent intonation units,and the reason lies in the structure of sentence builders themselves.Those cases of formulaic sequences which are interrupted by pauses in English rehearsed speech are primarily found in formal style of language,which can be attributed to the need for delivery of particular messages in formal occasions,and these pauses mark either independent intonation units or intermediate phrases.In addition,the selected formal speech in Chinese is characterized by a larger number of formulaic sequences which are independent intonation units themselves and these cases are often detected in parallel structures,and the syllable-timed nature of Chinese and the physiological need for breathing are the causes.With regard to tonicity,70%of English formulaic sequences which are independent intonation units assign the nucleus to the last lexical word.By comparison,50%of Chinese formulaic sequences have this trend.English formulaic sequences which are intonation units themselves in rehearsed speech,therefore,are more likely to assign the nucleus to the last lexical word.In addition,formulaic sequences which are situated in the ending position of an intonation unit are more likely to receive nucleus,which is true of both English and Chinese.This finding unfolds the positional bias of those formulaic sequences which are within intonation units and receive the nucleus.The investigation of the word where the nucleus is placed reveals that the overwhelming majority of the formulaic sequences receiving the nucleus assign the nucleus to content words rather than function words,which is true of both English and Chinese,and this is a result of greater semantic weight and more information content words carry.The present study is a relatively comprehensive representation of the prosodic indicators of formulaic sequences in rehearsed speech,pushing forward future studies by providing more robust empirical evidence on formulaic sequences' storage and retrieval as a whole as well as the tonic patterns of formulaic sequences in rehearsed speech.Additionally,the present study enriches the knowledge of the universality and individuality of different languages in terms of formulaic sequences' prosodic indicators.In the meantime,the pedagogical implication lies in the maximization of L2 learners' access to authentic L1 oral input to facilitate the acquisition of formulaic sequences and fluency in oral output through a prosody-driven mechanism.Consequently,the present study is expected to point future studies to the prosodic representation of formulaic sequences in both first language and second language.