The Prosodic Features Of Focus Sentences With “Shi” In Chinese

As one of the important content words in modern Chinese,“Shi” has always been attached great importance by grammarians and linguists while the research results are abundant.The previous researches on “Shi” sentences mainly focused on the structural classification from the perspective of semantic,syntactic and pragmatic.The studies from syntactic and semantic aspects of the “Shi[...XP...]” focus sentence have been relatively mature,but from the phonological aspect,there has been little systematic and specialized research on the characteristics of the overall intonation structure of this syntax and the acoustic boundaries between narrow and wide focus,the relationship between the marker “Shi” and stress in focus expressions,and whether “Shi” has an effect on the intensity of focus stress.Therefore,this thesis uses the method of experimental phonetics analyze and summarize the prosodic expression and distribution characteristics of the pitch,length and intensity of “Shi” focus sentences.The following three issues are mainly discussed: 1)Compared with normal focus of declarative sentences,what are the characteristics of pitch,length and intensity distribution of “Shi” sentences under the influence of focus marker “Shi”? 2)What are the characteristics of the pitch,length and intensity when the focus marker “Shi” located in different positions of the sentence? 3)Does “Shi” have an effect on the subsequent focus stress,and what is the interaction between the syntactic device “Shi” and the subsequent elements of focus stress?The participants are six students from Xi’an International Studies University.Cooledit Pro 2.1 was used for recording,and Praat was used to extract the pitch,length and intensity data of the statements.Then,the measured raw data were converted into percentage,lengthening rate and energy ratio values respectively.Finally,Excel were used for data analysis.The research shows that:In terms of pitch: Compared with the declarative sentence,the phrase with the focus after the word “Shi” expands to the maximum extent in the whole sentence,and the increase of the up-line is significantly greater than the decrease of the down-line,that is,the stress of focus is mainly realized by the improvement of the up-line.In terms of the extent of extension,the sentence with“Shi” at the beginning of the sentence is the largest,followed by “Shi” in the middle of the sentence,and “Shi” at the end of the sentence is the smallest.Within the phrase where the focus is located,the last word has the largest expansion and is the most important bearer of the focus stress.The focus stress of “Shi” sentence is achieved by the maximization of the focus range and the large compression of the range after the focus,and the change of the up-line plays a key role.In terms of duration: Compared with the declarative sentence,the focus duration of the “Shi” sentence mainly focuses on the final word,which has the largest increase and a sharp decrease in the phonetic duration of adjacent element after it.In terms of intensity: Compared with the declarative sentence,the intensity of each word in the phrase where focus marker located in is enhanced,and the increasing of the last word is the most significant.The intensity of the focus word is significantly increased,while the tone intensity of the adjacent element after the focus is significantly decreased.By comparing the of focus position with that of declarative sentences,the increase of pitch and duration of focus words in the “Shi” sentence is significantly greater.In this sense,the focus stress of “Shi” sentence should be at a higher stress level due to the syntactic intervention of “Shi” compared with the focus sentence that only uses phonetic means.In the grammatical sense,the marker word “Shi” plays the role of reminding focus,and reinforcing stress in pronunciation.