Intonational pitch features of interrogatives and declaratives in Chengdu dialect

  • Hongliu Jiang College of Foreign Languages and Cultures, Sichuan University
Ariticle ID: 578
9 Views, 10 PDF Downloads
Keywords: Chengdu dialect; lexical tone; intonation; pitch features; perturbation

Abstract

As a representative of southwestern Mandarin, the Chengdu dialect has its own distinctive pitch features in phonology of tone and intonation. Research on the pronunciation and lexical tone of the Chengdu dialect has a long history with a certain amount of theoretical results. However, research on intonation of Chengdu dialect is still rare. The writer provides an acoustic analysis of research into intonational pitch features of interrogative and declarative sentences of Chengdu dialect, discussing the F0 contour at the final syllable (character) of each sentence to find out if the statement or question mood is carried by the edge tone as well as the pitch perturbation between lexical tone and intonation on it. The results of this acoustic analysis show that there exist statement and question mood of Chengdu dialect carried by the final syllable within an intonational phrase as well as the perturbation on the final syllable (character) by the coexistence of its lexical tone and intonation.

References

Chang NC (1958) Tones and intonation in the Chengtu dialect (Szechuan, China). Phonetica (2): 59–85.

Cui R (1994) A Review of Studies on Sichuan Dialects. Studies of the Chinese Language (6): 419–429.

Ladd DR (2008) Intonational Phonology (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Liang D (1982) Sichuan Dialect and Standard Chinese. Chengdu: Sichuan People’s Publishing House.

Liang D and Huang (1998) Chengdu Dialect Dictionary. Nanjing: Jiangsu Education Press; 1998.

Lin M (2004) Chinese intonation and tone. Journal of Applied Linguistics (3): 57–67.

Lin M (2006) Interrogation vs. declarative and the boundary tone in Standard Chinese. Studies of the Chinese Language (4): 364–376.

Lin M (2012) Experimental Study of Chinese Intonation. Beijing: China Social Science Press.

Ma Q (1988) A Preliminary Study on the Description of Intonation and Phonology in Standard Chinese. Tianjin: Tianjin Normal University.

Shi F (2013) The Intonation Pattern: The Cornerstone of Experimental Linguistics. Beijing: The Commercial Press.

Wu Z (1990) The basic intonation pattern of Standard Chinese. Mr. Wang Li Memorial Essays, Beijing: The Commercial Press.

Wu Z (1996) Zhao Yuanren’s contribution to the study of Chinese tones. Journal of Tsinghua University (Philosophy and Social Science Edition) (3): 58–63.

Zhao Y (2002) A preliminary study of English intonation (with American variants) and it Chinese equivalent. In: Wu Z and Zhao X (eds) Linguistic Essays of Y.R. Zhao. Beijing: The Commercial Press.

Zhen S, et al. (1960) The phonology of Sichuan Dialect. Journal of Sichuan University (3): 1–123.

Published
2019-09-21
How to Cite
Jiang, H. (2019). Intonational pitch features of interrogatives and declaratives in Chengdu dialect. Forum for Linguistic Studies, 1(1), 77-87. https://doi.org/10.18063/FLS.v1i1.1082
Section
Article