The relative pitch of tones inside disyllabic words in mandarin speech

本文研究二字詞內部字調的相對音高。來探索國語的聲韻特性。所謂的相對音高，指的是從一個字調到另一個字調的音高變化，一般來說，可分成上揚、平行、或上升。本研究所採用的語料，是兩場不同的演講錄音帶，分別由一男一女所主講。每場演講取五分鐘的資料，然後再找出所有的二字詞。透過One-way ANOVAA變異數分析，加上Tukey-HSD後測檢驗(p<.05)，我們發現，二字詞內的相對音高與該詞的字調組合有顯著的關係。一般來說，該詞的起始字調就能決定其相對音高的走勢：一聲或四聲起頭的詞，其相對音高不是平行就是下降，三聲的話是上揚，二聲的話則是上揚或下降。除此之外，若把上升或下降的幅度也考慮進去，每種字調組合都還有自己明顯的走勢。雖然一個字調在自然談話當中無法維持其本身原有的音高，但透過相對音高的方式，卻能發現其原有的音高很明顯的保存在一個二字詞當中。因此，作者認為相對音高是國語中，能夠不受語調影響而存字調特質的一個音韻特性。The present study is a small step toward a thorough understanding of the prosodic nature of the Mandarin spoken in Taiwan. Specifically, this study focuses on one prosodic property of lexical tones in natural spontaneous speech: the relative pitch between two neighboring tones. The relative pitch is defined as the pitch change from one tone to another. Generally, the relative pitch can be rising, level, or falling.This study has chosen disyllabic words as the basic units of observation. The language data are public speeches of two speakers, one male and one female. Five minutes of speech are sampled from each speaker, and disyllabic words are identified. Through One-way ANOVA analysis with Tukey-HSD post hoc tests at a significant level of. 05, the relative pitch inside a word is found to vary systematically with the tone pair of the word. In general, a word's starting tone determines its relative pitch pattern: level or falling for Mandarin tonel and tone4, rising for tone3, and rising or falling for tone2. In particular, each tone pair can be distinguished by the magnitude of its relative pitch.Inside a disyllabic word, the intrinsic height of a lexical tone can be preserved through the relative pitch, although such intrinsic height cannot always be maintained throughout the entire speech. For this reason, the relative pitch is considered to be a prosodic feature which can preserve the identity of lexical tones under the influence of intonation in natural Mandarin speech