The present study investigates four kinds of pitch variations in the running speech of Standard Chinese: (1) the down-step effect on the second H tone in a HLH tonal sequence motivated by the L tone; (2) the up-step effect on the focal H tone and the drop-step effect on the following H tone in the same sentence; (3) the lift-step effect on the H tone when it follows a focal L tone in the same sentence. Findings suggest that the pitch values of the running speech in Standard Chinese are determined by two types of factors: the pitch features of syllabic tones and some kinds of modification effects which play the role of raising or lowering the pitch register of the syllabic tone. Although these two kinds of factors work simultaneously on parallel on different tiers, the pitch features (e.g. H or L) of syllabic tones determine the manner of association between these two kinds of factors.
Cite as: Xiong, Z. (2006) Pitch variations in the running speech of standard Chinese. Proc. 2nd International Symposium on Tonal Aspects of Languages (TAL 2006), 122-125
@inproceedings{xiong06_tal,
author={Ziyu Xiong},
title={{Pitch variations in the running speech of standard Chinese}},
year=2006,
booktitle={Proc. 2nd International Symposium on Tonal Aspects of Languages (TAL 2006)},
pages={122--125}
}