THE STRESS IN CHINESE: EXPERIMENTALLY-PHONETIC RESEARCH

Abstract

The article is devoted to the problem of the presence / absence of stress in Chinese. After a brief review of the types of stress, we give phoneticians’ different positions on the problems of the functions the stress (as a suprasegmental unit). It should be noted that the functional of this suprasegmental unit is determined by the structure of the language. In addition to reviewing the currently existing positions of the linguistic science on the phenomenon of stress in general, we give the specialists’ position on the issue of determining the existence and functions of stress in Chinese in particular. After that we describe an experiment aimed at determining the stressed syllables in not monosyllables Chinese words. The experiment was performed using the computer program Waveserfer, designed for processing of audio material, measure various parameters sounding speech. A voiced text was used as the experimental material. The text was produced by a professional native speaker. According to the results of this experiment, it can be concluded that stress as an independent suprasegmental unit that has definite functions (the distinction of meanings, the combining sounds in a word and so on) in the Chinese language cannot be defined.

Keywords

• suprasegmental unit, stress, tone, the distinction of meanings function