Intonation Rhythm Chinese—English Contrast and Study

Liu+Jing

摘 要：This paper aims to raise language learners' awareness of the distinctive features of these two languages， for example， the vital role of tone played in Chinese while the important position of stress and intonation in English， either learners of Chinese or English. Tone and intonation are not only phonetic features of languages， but also useful in conveying various meanings， which enriches a language's implications. All this will definitely facilitate the process of communication and avoid misunderstandings.

關鍵詞：Chinese-English；Contras；Study；

Chapter One Comparative Study of Chinese and English Rhythm

When talking about overseas research of language rhythm， the previous studies treated this issue mainly from two perspectives：

（1）The first school of the research on English rhythm conducted a series of macro-level studies which were based on the theory of metrical phonetics. The representatives of this school are Prince and Selkirk. They combined abstract timing pattern of English with metrical phonology and inserted English stress in to achieve the alternating strong and weak stresses of the language. The weakness of this school is that they only paid attention on the timing aspect among each stress which is restricted to the physical characteristics， but neglected the possible implied social meaning；

（2）The second school of research was based on one of Bolingers studies which delineated English as being isochronous tendency and he put forward some rhythm rules. One of his assumptions was that when a syllable A follows after another long syllable B， the former syllable A needs lengthen itself out. There were also some problems. Firstly， the theory of absolute equitime that Bolinger raised in his research was attacked and proved to be wrong by other linguists. It was just relative equitime. Secondly， there was a paucity of theories that can support this assumption. Irrespective of the limitations of his research， the theory of full vowel and reduced vowel that was illustrated in his study forms the basis of this paper when concerning the English rhythm.

Western linguists paid more attention on the research of stress rather than on rhythm. They beheld the view that “if we couldnt mark the stress out， we will never feel the rhythm. Stress is the sign of English rhythm.”（插入相關文獻：作者，年份和頁碼） We know that English is a language which holds stress-timed rhythm and its beat is isochronous between one stress and the next stress. So， in English， stress is the sign and carrier of rhythm； in another word， stress in English is the outskirt to evaluate this languages rhythm and the initial step to perceive English rhythm is to interpret stress. “Intonation is a level of stress， higher than the content word stress level”， this was also mentioned in rhythm phonology of English.

Chapter Two Comparative study of Chinese and English tone and intonation

2.1 Background

As has been stated above that Chinese and English belong to different language systems and they bear many similarities and differences between each other. As for the tone and intonation， different researchers have different viewpoints. Some of them hold the view that these two languages all possess these phonetic characteristics of tone and intonation； while other believed that these two phonetic concepts belong to Chinese and English respectively： tone is for Chinese and intonation for English. What this paper advocated is a little bit different from the above two opinions： tone is distinctive to Chinese， but intonation can be found in both languages.

2.2 Comparative study of tone

According to different scholars， they give different definitions to tone. Li Xuezhen （1999： 379） defined note as “A phonetic or phonological unit belonging to a set distinguished or primarily distinguished by levels of or by changes in pitch”， while there is another definition which described tone as a pitch or change in pitch of the voice that serves to distinguish words in tonal language （Net. 1）. In spite of these disparate illustrations of tone， they all have one thing in common， that is tone can distinguish words.

2.2.1 Chinese——tone language

In Chinese， tones definition possesses some special features： it means the high and low， rise and fall changes of syllables when it is used to refer to a Chinese word or a word phrase， which has four basic tone patterns： yinping（陰平）， yangping（陽平）， shangsheng（上聲） and qusheng（去聲） （definition from Oxford Advanced Learners English-Chinese Dictionary）.

2.2.2 Summary

From the above comparison and analysis， we can get to the conclusion that from the angle of tone， Chinese and English have totally different characteristics： Chinese is a kind of tone language with four tones which can be used to distinguish the meaning of each word. The four tones have great influences on the meaning expressing. Also there are some changes of the tones under various situations， which is also quite important for conveying meanings. The tone changes， the meaning will vary a lot correspondently. In this aspect， Chinese seems more complicated than English and this makes Chinese become much harder to understand and to learn.

Acknowledgements

Many other professors have also contributed in one way or another to the birth of this thesis. Their magnificent ideas shed light to my thesis. Hence， my sincere thanks go to the teachers who have instructed my courses and offered me enormous help during my study for the degree of M.A. in the School of Foreign Studies， Yangtze University， particularly to Prof. Zhang Wenxun， Prof. Zheng Hourao， and Prof. Xie Jiacheng for their illuminating ideas.

My thanks also go to my beloved families， fellow-graduates who have given me valuable suggestions， which are of great importance to my thesis.

References

[1] Adams， V. Complex Words in English [M]. Essex：Pearson Education， 1973.

[2] Aitchison，J. Language Change：Progress or Decay？ [M] Cambridge：Cambridge University Press， 2001.