Tones, stress and intonation

[roddy]

I've been reading a textbook on translation recently (I know, I should really learn to speak more than one language fluently first, but I do tend to get ahead of myself) and came across this quote discussing the use of stress and intonation to signal new or important information while speaking - ie

My brother is going to New York (not my sister) versus

My brother is going to New York (not San Francisco)

The book says

In some languages, stress and intonation are not available as a device for signalling new information. They are not available in Chinese . . .

That doesn't sound right to me. While I could believe that Chinese can't play around with intonation as much as we do, because it would interfere with the tones, surely a word could still be stressed by pronouncing it more clearly and carefully than usual . . .

Incidentally, I picked this book up in Beijing for 28Y - it costs 28$ on Amazon - it's one of a range of linguistics / teaching books reprinted in China by the Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, and they're well worth looking out for (though I haven't got much past the third chapter of any of them . . .)

Roddy

[Guest Anonymous]

That doesn't sound right to me. While I could believe that Chinese can't play around with intonation as much as we do, because it would interfere with the tones, surely a word could still be stressed by pronouncing it more clearly and carefully than usual . . .

I don't believe Chinese being a tonal language interferes with stressing or emphasizing a word (or words). While one not often hear stressing or emphasizing in Chinese as much as in English, I personally believe it has more to do with culture rather than the language itself. The traditional Confucian Chinese culture (Rujia) values rules and order. That's why *generally* a typical Chinese person tends to be less "animated" than a typical American person. What I mean is that Americans generally joke around freely, even with strangers. However, Chinese generally only joke around and act like themselves with good friends that they trust. However, things are changing as the Chinese society starts "opening up" and being influenced by the Western culture more and more.

[smithsgj]

I'm pretty sure there have been studies on the dynamic range of fundamental frequency (ie pitch, basically) in tone and non-tone languages. I'd say Chinese does move up and down the scale a bit more than English, impressionistically, and I'd put that down to the fact that pitch in Chinese conveys denotation (word meaning) as well as connotation (mood, attitude, emphasis and whatever).

I'm not at all sure about Kulong's idea. No matter how unanimated Chinese speakers are (and I'm not convinced that this is true) stress is still used to accent key word components, emphasis gives the focus of a sentence, and an utterance is subject to the phenomenon of downdrift (the tendency in all languages for pitch to go down over the course of an utterance).

I think that to suggest that certain languages are less animated because the cultures typically associated with them are more constrained is specious. What about all those banquets? Here in Taiwan ppl tend to flip into Taiwanese when they're feeling REALLY animated -- but still the same Confucians, still speaking a tone language.

Bear in mind that pitch is only one of three acoustic correlates of prosody (basically, intonation). The other two are intensity (basically loudness) and duration (syllable lengthening or otherwise). The Mandarin neutral tone (which indicates an unstressed syllable, often, for example, is chiefly realized by variation in these two correlates. To emphasize a syllable, a Chinese speaker is likely to say it louder and longer. We use these other correlates in English too.

The book Roddy read may have been suggesting that PITCH is not used to signal new info, leaving the field open for intensity and duration. There are certainly no natural languages which are incapable of expressing new information, emphasis (and for that matter animation) by one prosodic means or another.

[Guest Anonymous]

I'm not at all sure about Kulong's idea. No matter how unanimated Chinese speakers are (and I'm not convinced that this is true) stress is still used to accent key word components, emphasis gives the focus of a sentence, and an utterance is subject to the phenomenon of downdrift (the tendency in all languages for pitch to go down over the course of an utterance).

I never said that Chinese speakers are unanimated, period. I said that in comparison, a *TYPICAL* Chinese speaker tend to be *LESS* animated than a *TYPICAL* English speaker. I also never said that Chinese speakers *DO NOT* emphasize words and phrases, in fact, I said that they *DO*.

I think that to suggest that certain languages are less animated because the cultures typically associated with them are more constrained is specious. What about all those banquets? Here in Taiwan ppl tend to flip into Taiwanese when they're feeling REALLY animated -- but still the same Confucians, still speaking a tone language.

If you're familiar with Confucian ideas (Rujia Sixiang) at all, you'd know that it places a great deal of importance on following certain rules. Pretty much, everything must have order. What are these banquets you speak of? I don't know what you're refering to when you talk about Taiwan ppl tend to flip into Taiwanese, and I lived in Taiwan for 10 years.

[smithsgj]

Kulong, I think we basically agree, don't we: tone language status doesn't preclude the use of intonation for other purposes. This is widely researched, and well-known, and Roddy's book is wrong.

But you did say that English makes *more* use of stress and emphasis than Chinese. I disagree with this, because I think these features, as well as phrasing, are about equally important in all languages.

You are certainly right to say that Chinese societal behaviour is constrained by Confucian principles, especially in the workplace (and surprisingly, in my experience, in the family, where I would have expected people to be more open). But Chinese speakers do argue, shout, and get "animated", as you will I'm sure agree. (and I have been to some banquets in China itself where people have got pretty excited, perhaps mostly through a baijiu too many!)

I took you to mean that the rujia thing somehow affects the resources available to the language, while I believe these are more or less universal. But in fact I was wrong, because you meant only to suggest that such resources are drawn on less frequently, which is a different matter.

Taiwan: you will know from your time here that people often slip into Taiwanese when the discussion becomes less formal. Animated discussion, in my experience, is also often conducted in Taiwanese, particularly when the participants know each other well.

[Guest Anonymous]

Kulong, I think we basically agree, don't we: tone language status doesn't preclude the use of intonation for other purposes. This is widely researched, and well-known, and Roddy's book is wrong.

Agreed :-)

But you did say that English makes *more* use of stress and emphasis than Chinese. I disagree with this, because I think these features, as well as phrasing, are about equally important in all languages.

They are equally important in all languages. I only meant that it's used more frequently in English due to cultural reasons.

You are certainly right to say that Chinese societal behaviour is constrained by Confucian principles, especially in the workplace (and surprisingly, in my experience, in the family, where I would have expected people to be more open). But Chinese speakers do argue, shout, and get "animated", as you will I'm sure agree. (and I have been to some banquets in China itself where people have got pretty excited, perhaps mostly through a baijiu too many!)

Actually many Chinese families are more open than you might think. I know my family joke around often although we still very much respect each other. I know many other Chinese families who are also this way. But generally these Chinese families are either from Taiwan, Hong Kong, have have lived in the U.S. for many years. I seldom see families from the mainland who behave this way, although they do exist. Yes, Chinese are capable of getting "animated", I never said we aren't :-)

Taiwan: you will know from your time here that people often slip into Taiwanese when the discussion becomes less formal. Animated discussion, in my experience, is also often conducted in Taiwanese, particularly when the participants know each other well.

Well, first of all, not everyone speak Taiwanese in Taiwan, especially in northern Taiwan. Since I've only lived in Taipei for 10 years, I seldom see people engage in Taiwanese. Also keep in mind, this was during 1980 - 1990, before the DDP took control and started promoting speaking Taiwanese. But do I know what you're refering to.

[wix]

I am not expert in linguistics and if someone can fill in the gaps in my post that would be helpful.

I think Chinese does have stresses, but because of the different linguistic characteristics of Chinese these are not as distinct or as essential to meaning as they are in English.

English is a stress-timed language. The length of time that it takes to say a sentence depends on the number of stressed words in the sentence. i.e. it is independent of the number of syllables. (obviously in some extreme cases this doesn't apply, but it generally works) In English unstressed words or syllables or often not fully pronounced hence the numerous contractions and unstressed vowels in English.

The amount of time it takes to say a sentence in Chinese is dependent on the number of syllables in the sentence and there are no stresses that are essential to make the sentence intelligible or give it meaning. In Chinese every syllable is pronounced.

[smithsgj]

Wix's post is about stress in the sense of accent - the rhythm of a sentence. It's a feature of the language, not of speaker mood, attitude etc.

There's a school of thought that claims that the stress-timed vs syllable-timed feature is wrong, but I can't remember why, or any more detail than that. To me, Wix's post seems correct in all respects.

I think one lot of people say all Chinese syllables are stressed except those with neutral tone, and another lot say one syllable in each word gets stress (the head syllable).

When people use prosodic effects to register particular moods, attitudes, and speech act types (asking a question, giving an order), these can be realized by changes in pitch, intensity and duration. I believe this is common to all languages.

[Guest Yinyue Mike]

Hi Everyone,

This is very interesting, because sometimes I swear I hear a specific "stress" in Chinese though I know it's not supposed to be important like in English. Obviously a word like lizi 例子 (example) sounds like the stress is on the first syllable, but for some reason in wenhua da geming 文化大革命 (great cultural revolution) I would swear the stress is on on the last syllable, ming. Any thoughts?

By the way, this is my first post, so 大家好！

Mike/白毅敏

[confucius]

Certainly I have heard Chinese people say the Mandarin word "gaosu" (tell) with extra heavy stress before.

"Wo GAOsu ni, qin ai de, xishoujian mei you zhi." (I'm telling you, dear, there's no paper in the bathroom.)

Also the word "yi dian" (a little) can really get stressed out in Beijing by pausing an extra half second or so in between "yi' and "dianr".

Wo YI..dianr ye bu dong. (I don't understand a thing.)

If you listen to traditional "xiangsheng", you can hear plenty of examples where intonation is used in a humorous way.

[889]

It's not just stress, it's lengthening. There's quite a difference between "Wo GAOsu NI!" and "Wo G-A-Osu N-I!!" Try an unstressed "Wo g-a-osu n-i" -- I hear something threatening.

[ala]

I've been reading a textbook on translation recently (I know' date=' I should really learn to speak more than one language fluently first, but I do tend to get ahead of myself) and came across this quote discussing the use of stress and intonation to signal new or important information while speaking - ie

My [b']brother[/b] is going to New York (not my sister) versus

My brother is going to New York (not San Francisco)

Chinese:

他是大学生，不是高中生。

他是台湾人，不是大陆人。

In both examples， first syllable in 大学 can be stressed; and first syllable in 台湾 can be lengthened for underscoring in Mandarin. The problem however comes for tone-1 and sometimes tone-3.

I know that in Shanghainese, one can either 1. stress the word (as Shanghainese is not very tone conscious), 2. pronounce each syllable of the word in their isolated tones (and not in their normal neutral-like tone sandhi), or 3. lengthen the syllable considerably (usually by a whole syllable measure). Longer timing with stress is the most popular method for underscoring in Shanghainese; even the longer syllable is about as long as a typical non-neutral Mandarin syllable, but is easily perceptible for native speakers of Wu.

[Guest Gundaliro]

I've been reading a textbook on translation recently (I know' date=' I should really learn to speak more than one language fluently first, but I do tend to get ahead of myself) and came across this quote discussing the use of stress and intonation to signal new or important information while speaking - ie

My [b']brother[/b] is going to New York (not my sister) versus

My brother is going to New York (not San Francisco)

Chinese:

他是大学生，不是高中生。

他是台湾人，不是大陆人。

In both examples， first syllable in 大学 can be stressed; and first syllable in 台湾 can be lengthened for underscoring in Mandarin. The problem however comes for tone-1 and sometimes tone-3.

That's not really parallel to roddy's posted example, though. In any case, I'd still say that you could probably translate the "My brother is going to New York" sentence and stress either "brother" or "New York" in Chinese.