英汉条件状语从句韵律结构对比研究

摘要

This study compared the prosodic features of adverbial clauses of condition in English and Chinese.The results illustrated that Pause and pitch reset are the two main boundary markers in English while pause is the most used boundary marker in Chinese.For tonicity,English tends to set the nucleus at the last content word in an into-nation phrase,while in Chinese,the nucleus can be set not only at the last content word but sometimes also possi-bly at the negative words in the intonation phrase.In terms of tone,both English and Chinese show a declination of overall pitch contour,and the nuclear tones in the two languages also tend to be falling.As for the boundary tone, English show a rising tone when the subordinate clause is in sentence-initial or sentence-middle positions,and a falling or level tone when the clause is in sentence-final position.However,the boundary tone in Chinese is always a falling tone no matter whether the subordinate clause is in sentence-initial,-middle or-final positions.%通过对英汉标准发音人条件状语从句的韵律特征的声学分析，本研究发现：在调群切分上，英语以停顿和音高重设为主要的调群切分指征，而汉语则以停顿为主要的边界指征。就调核实现而言，英语中的调核往往会出现在最后一个实义词项上，而汉语除此而外还可能出现在表达否定意义的否定词项上。在语调方面，英汉语调短语都呈现出逐渐下倾的语调走势，且核调和语调在多数情况下都呈现降调；英语的边界调随从句出现在句首、句中和句尾等不同位置而变化，而汉语边界调则始终保持降调。