Chanted Call Tune in Tianjin Mandarin: Disyllabic Calls

This paper examines the chanted call tune in Tianjin Mandarin in order to investigate the possibilities of intonational components, i.e. pitch accents, boundary tones, etc., in a tonal language. Six native Tianjin speakers’ production of disyllabic names and kinship terms were recorded. The speech materials were composed of a set of left-prominent disyllabic names and a set of right-prominent disyllabic names. The results show that there is a L% boundary tone at the end of an intonational phrase, regardless of which lexical tone it has. Different from data from the intonational polar questions, the L% boundary tone was phonetically manifested and overrode the lexical tone contours. A H* pitch accent was found to be associated with the H of each lexical tone. Lengthening was also found in the chanted call tune. The chanted call tune in Tianjin Mandarin can be represented as follows: [[H*]sustained]higher register + L%.