关键词: 韵律词; 结构因素; 音高; 异化; 发音协同

Abstract: This paper, particularly focusing on the pitch of prosodic words, has conducted a contrastive study on the structure of prosodic words in English and Mandarin . This paper reports a Mandarin monologue speech corpus-study, an experimental phonetic attempt to conduct a study on the pitch of trisyllabic prosodic words in Mandarin monologue. In addition, taking the characteristics of English prosodic words into consideration, the paper makes a contrastive analysis of prosodic words in English and Mandarin. This study finds that the pitch of trisyllabic prosodic words in Mandarin is inevitably affected by structural factors. As far as the left syllable is concerned, the grammatical category, prosodic hierarchical boundary and the position of the intonational phrase where the syllable is located, the mid syllable and the right syllable may have influences on the pitch contour of the left syllable. As to the mid syllable, the grammatical category, the left syllable, the right syllable and the position of the intonational phrase where the syllable is located may have influences on the pitch contour of the mid syllable. As for the right syllable, the prosodic hierarchical boundary where the syllable is located and the mid syllable may have effects on the pitch contour of the right syllable. Different from the previous findings of the study on read corpus, this study shows that the mid syllable not only has dissimilatory effects but also has assimilatory effects on the pitch of its preceding syllable. The left syllable has anticipatory effects on the onset pitch of the mid syllable and the right syllable has coarticulation effects on the offset pitch of the mid syllable.

Keywords: prosodic words; structural factors; pitch; regressive effects; coarticulation