Primer diálogo EL SUJETO NO ES (ESTÁ) SUJETO.

Chinese is a tone language. As defined by Pike (1948), a tone language has lexically significant, contrastive, but relative pitch on each syllable. The contrastive function of fundamental frequency (F0) at word level is called tone. In Chinese the domain of contrastive tonal patterns is a syllable. There are four lexical tones in standard Chinese, three of which involve gliding movements. Tones of this kind are called contour tones. The tonal pattern carried by the voiced part of the syllable differentiates syllables identical in segmental structure. The constituent of tone is just as essential as the initial and final in the formation of Chinese syllables. The four lexical tones

A tonal pattern has three salient acoustic dimensions: fundamental frequency (F0), duration, and intensity, of which the F0 (perceived as relative pitch) pattern is the most important factor for identification of a Chinese tone. The subjective pitch shapes which correspond to the four lexical tones in citation forms, i.e. when they appear in isolation, can be concisely described as follows:

Tone Description Pitch Graph Example Gloss

1 High level 55: 1 ma1 mother

2 Rising 35: A ma2 hemp

3 Dipping 214: ma3 horse

CHAPTER 2 BACKGROUND OF MODERN STANDARD CHINESE

where the notional pitch values and the graphs are in a normalized five-grade notation proposed by Chao (1930) which is a convenient system to describe Chinese tonal patterns. In the notation system ( as illustrated in Figure 2.2.4-1), the tonal contours are represented schematically by ’time-varying pitch graphs’ attached to

5

4

3

2

1

F igure 2.2.4-1 Normalized five-grade pitch notation

the left of a vertical reference line, which indicates the normal tonal variation range (tonal register) of a speaker’s voice, and is equally divided into four intervals by five points. The resultant five points 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 correspond to low, mid-low, mid, mid-high, and high pitch levels respectively. Then the tonal contours can be represented graphically by the simplified pitch curves beside the ruler. It is in this way that the tonal graphic symbols have been formed. Each of the graphic symbols consists of a reference pitch range line to the right, preceded by a line indicating the pitch of the tone. The digital sequence indicates the pitch values at the start point, turning point (for tone 3 only), and ending point o f the tone. Thus tone 1 is a high-level tone remaining at pitch level 5. Tone 2 is a rising tone, going from

CHAPTER 2 BACKGROUND OF MODERN STANDARD CHINESE

pitch level 3 to pitch level 5. Tone 3 begins falling from pitch level 2 to the lowest possible level and then rises to pitch level 4. Tone 4 falls from pitch level 5 all the way to pitch level 1. The advantage of using this notation is that the differences in individual pitch ranges can be discounted.

The tones differ not only in pitch pattern but also in duration. When tones in citation form, tone-3 has the greatest duration, tone-4 has statistically the shortest duration, while tone-1 and tone-2 are intermediate in duration between tone-3 and tone-4 (Woo, 1969; Howie, 1976; Luo and Wang, 1981; and Leather, 1988). Tone sandhi

It is a characteristic of many tone languages that the phonetic realization of a particular tone depends heavily upon the tones occurring in neighbouring syllables. Either the occurrence of tone on a syllable or its phonetic realization may be influenced by the tonal environment. This phenomenon is known as "tone sandhi". There are many ways in which tone sandhi may operate. For example, in Chinese a dipping tone is realized as a rising tone when followed by another dipping tone, and a falling tone is realized as a half falling when followed by another falling tone. The formulation is given by:

T3 --> T2 / T3 (2.2.4-1)

T4 ~> half T4 / _ T4 . (2.2.4-2) So in Chinese both the tonal pattern (the former case) and the tonal shape (the latter case) can be affected by the neighbouring tone. In the present study, tone sandhi will refer to the case of changing tonal pattern only, while changes in tonal shapes are dealt with as tonal variations since they are partly caused by lexical prominence distribution. Under this definition, there is only one tone sandhi rule

CHAPTER 2 BACKGROUND OF MODERN STANDARD CHINESE

expressed by formula (2.2.4-1). In Chinese the domain of the sandhi pattern appears to be conditioned by syntactic boundaries and speech tempo (Wang, 1967). Neutral tone

In addition to the four lexical tones, Chinese has a special kind of neutral tone (or light tone) which also expresses lexical and grammatical distinctions, such

as: da4y f (careless) vs. defy? (summary), and cheng2li° (in the city) vs. chengHi3

(downtown). Neutral tone is characterized by shortening of the duration (about half the length of a tonic syllable) but its intensity level is not necessarily lower than normal (Lin and Yan, 1980). The pitch realization of neutral tone entirely depends on the preceding tone. In the five-grade notation, the pitch value of neutral tone can be denoted as: low-mid (value "2") after high level tone, mid (value "3") after rising tone, high-mid (value "4") after dipping tone, and low (value "1") after falling tone (Chao, 1968). The syllable with neutral tone also exhibits changes in quality, such as vowel reduction and missing ending etc. (Lin and Yan, 1989).

CHAPTER 3

OUTLINE OF THE CHINESE SYNTHESIS-BY-RULE SYSTEM

3.1 Overview of the system

* Text input representation

* Text to detailed phonetic description conversion * Phonetic synthesis by rule