On the prosodic Features of Old & New Information in British English and Chinese Mandarin

• 作 者: YahKang;WeijingZhou;HeShen;
• 机 构: School of Foreign Languages,Jiangsu University of Science and Technology
• 出 处: 第十一届中国语音学学术会议
• 发表日期: 2014年期

　　This study adopted an experimental phonetic design to explore the similarities and differences of the prosodic features of old & new information in connected speech between English and Chinese in terms of Three Ts (tonality, tonicity and tone) Theory.(Halliday, 1976; Wells, 2006).The treatment text was a dialogue Shoes and the subjects were 4 Chinese Standard Mandarin Speakers (CSMSs) and 4 British Received Pronunciation Speakers (BRPSs), whose reading of the dialogue were recorded in UK and China respectively and analyzed acoustically.The result shows that: for tonicity, both BRSPs and CSMSs tent to use high-pitch and long duration on new information carrying words in simple declarative sentences.In Wh-sentences, CSMSs tend to accent indexical words while BRPSs accent personal pronouns.Furthermore, in terms of tone pattem, BRPSs tend to use high tone (H*) and down-step (!H*L) and up-step (^H*L) tone to make new information prominent, while CSMSs tend to use falling tone (H*L) and High tone (H*) to make information focus prominent.