15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-15) Barcelona, Spain August 3-9, 2003

Location of Sentence Stresses Within Disyllabic Words in Mandarin

Yunjia Wang (1), Min Chu (2), Lin He (3)

(1) Beijing Language and Culture University, China
(2) Microsoft Research Asia, China
(3) Chinese Academy of Sciences, China

This paper investigates how sentence stresses are allocated within disyllabic prosodic words in Mandarin. By analyzing the results of a perceptual experiment on sentence stress, three factors i.e., stress type, word constitution and tone identity, which are probably related to sentence stress, are investigated. The authors argue that (1) semantic stresses tend to locate on the initial syllables within prosodic words, and rhythmic stresses on the final ones; (2) semantic stresses tend to locate on the syllables with the semantic focus of the words, and rhythmic stresses tend not to locate on syllables that have been neutralized or weakened on word level; (3) among the syllables with four tones, those with Tone 1 are the most possible ones to obtain sentence stress, and those with Tone 3 are the least possible ones, and those with Tone 2 and Tone 4 are in between.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Wang, Yunjia / Chu, Min / He, Lin (2003): "Location of sentence stresses within disyllabic words in Mandarin", In ICPhS-15, 1827-1830.