Syllabic weight and syllabic duration: a correlation between phonology and phonetics

This paper explores a correlation between phonology and phonetics. It first reviews a phonological analysis that proposes that all full Mandarin rhymes are heavy and that all Shanghai rhymes are underlyingly light. Then it reports a small phonetic experiment that attempts to determine whether there is a phonetic correlate for the phonological claim. Four Mandarin speakers and five Shanghai speakers were recorded, each reading five sentences four times at normal speed. Average syllable durations were determined. It was found that the average syllable duration in Mandarin was 215 ms and that in Shanghai was 162 ms. Statistics show that the durational difference is significant. The result thus agrees with the phonological analysis. Implications and limitations of the present study will be discussed.

[1]  Chilin Shih,et al.  The prosodic domain of tone sandhi in Chinese , 1986 .

[2]  Zhiming Bao.  Toward a Typology of Tone Sandhi , 1992 .

[3]  T. Balasubramanian,et al.  Timing in Tamil , 1980 .

[4]  M. Halle,et al.  An essay on stress , 1987 .

[5]  G. Pointon.  Is Spanish really syllable-timed? , 1980 .

[6]  Matthew Y. Chen.  Tone Rule Typology , 1992 .

[7]  Douglas Pulleyblank.  Tone in Lexical Phonology , 1986 .

[8]  D. Klatt.  Vowel Lengthening is Syntactically Determined in a Connected Discourse. , 1975 .

[9]  San Duanmu,et al.  A formal study of syllable, tone, stress and domain in Chinese languages , 1990 .

[10]  Jan Edwards,et al.  Papers in Laboratory Phonology: Lengthenings and shortenings and the nature of prosodic constituency , 1990 .

[11]  P. Ladefoged,et al.  Fundamental problems in phonetics , 1977 .

[12]  Zhiming Bao,et al.  On the nature of tone , 1990 .

[13]  Marjorie K. M. Chan.  Contour-tone spreading and tone sandhi in Danyang Chinese , 1991, Phonology.

[14]  Moira Yip.  The Spreading of Tonal Nodes and Tonal Features in Chinese Dialects , 1992 .

[15]  San Duanmu.  Re-examining Contour Tone Units in Chinese Languages , 1992 .

[16]  Benjamin Xiaoping Ao.  Phonetics and phonology of Nantong Chinese , 1993 .

[17]  Y. R. Chao.  Contrastive Aspects of the Wu Dialects , 1967 .

[18]  Kwan-hin Cheung,et al.  The phonology of present—day Cantonese , 1986 .

[19]  Nancy Helen Woo,et al.  Prosody and phonology , 1969 .

[20]  Yuen Ren Chao,et al.  The Non-Uniqueness of Phonemic Solutions of Phonetic Systems , 1934 .

[21]  San Duanmu,et al.  Rime length, stress, and association domains , 1993 .

[22]  Jin Shunde.  Shanghai morphotonemics : a preliminary study of tone sandhi behavior across word boundaries , 1986 .

[23]  P. Ladefoged.  A course in phonetics , 1975 .

[24]  Alan Prince,et al.  Foot and word in prosodic morphology: The Arabic broken plural , 1990 .

[25]  Bruce P. Hayes.  Compensatory Lengthening in Moraic Phonology , 1989 .

[26]  Draga Zec,et al.  The Phonology-syntax connection , 1990 .

[27]  D. Whalen,et al.  Connections between Nasality and Vowel Duration and Height: Elucidation of the Eastern Algonquian Intrusive Nasal , 1989 .

[28]  K. Pike,et al.  The intonation of American English , 1946 .

[29]  I. Lehiste.  Phonetic Disambiguation of Syntactic Ambiguity , 1973 .