On rhythm and its effects on syntax and acceptability

[Sibutlasi]

As I have recently posted on a (to me) puzzling effect of "guo4" on the obligatory shifting of a complement of "zhu4" into pre-verbal position and some people have vaguely invoked rhythmic factors, but my ignorance about Chinese stress is even more severe than in what concerns tone and melody, I have asked my native Chinese exchange partner to pronounce for me a list of examples of 2-syllable 'words', 2-syllable phrases/sentences, 3-syllable words, 3-syllable phrases, and a few very simple sentences including one of the examples in my earlier post: "wo3 zai4 bei3jing1 zhu4guo4". I chose examples in order to measure possible effects of tone on stress, and I offered my informant a number of options (not all the options, in the case of the longer expressions, but she was told to add one if necessary). The result of that little experiment is below. I have not 'parsed' any sequences of more than two syllables, but the stress values my informant has sanctioned (in bold) would, as far as I can see, enforce parsing sentences containing such expressions in ways that make me doubt whether the generalizations mentioned in Yip&Rimmington's chapter 26 (preference for trochees, syncopa, occassional dactyls, preference for Xx in final position, etc.) do have any real predictive power as filters on otherwise grammatically and lexically well-formed Chinese sentences. Could somebody here, preferably native speakers, go over the examples and tell me whether they agree or disagree with the stress patterns described? Thanks.

Chinese Rhythm (50-year old South Taiwan lady)

X= full stress, x = weaker stress

Pinyin Meaning Stress Pattern

(2-syllable words)

da4yi1 coat; overcoat Xx, XX, xX

wai4gong1 mother’s father Xx, XX, xX

kong1ci4 air Xx, XX, xX

gong1che1 bus Xx, XX, xX

fei1zhou1 Africa Xx, XX, xX

jie4shao4 introduce Xx, XX, xX

shi4gu4 accident Xx, XX, xX

ji4zhu4 remember Xx, XX, xX

man4bu4 walk; walkside Xx, XX, xX

shui4jiao4 sleep Xx, XX, xX

si4yue4 April Xx, XX, xX

gan3xie4 thank Xx, XX, xX

tang3xia4 lie down Xx, XX, xX

kao3shi4 exam Xx, XX, xX

hai2shi4 still Xx, XX, xX

jie2shu4 end; finish Xx, XX, xX

nü3shi4 Lady, Madam Xx, XX, xX

you3xie1 some Xx, XX, xX

zou3lu4 walk Xx, XX, xX

tong1guo4 pass (exam) Xx, XX, xX

2-syllable phrases:

jiao1 ke4 teach class Xx, XX, xX

kan4 shu1 read book Xx, XX, xX

chu1 qu4 go walk Xx, XX, xX

he1 cha2 drink tea Xx, XX, xX

he1 jiu3 drink alcohol Xx, XX, xX

xi3 shou3 wash hands Xx, XX, xX

2-syllable sentences:

zai4 jian4! again see! Xx, XX, xX

zao3 an1! good morning! Xx, XX, xX

qing3 wen4 Please ask question Xx, XX, xX

ni3 hao3! You well! Xx, XX, xX

3-syllable words:

fei1 ji1 chang3 airplane Xxx, XxX, xxX, xXx, XXx, xXX,…

ai4 hao4 zhe3 amateur Xxx, XxX, xxX, xXx, XXx, xXX,…

yuan2 zhu1 bi3 ball-point Xxx, XxX, xxX, xXx, XXx, xXX,…

tu2 shu1 guan3 library Xxx, XxX, xxX, xXx, XXx, xXX,…

shou3 feng1 qin2 accordion Xxx, XxX, xxX, xXx, XXx, xXX,…

3-syllable phrases:

he1 ka1fei1 drink coffee Xxx, XxX, xxX, xXx, XXx, xXX, XXX

zai4 bei3jing1 [be] in Beijing Xxx, XxX, xxX, xXx, XXx, xXX,…

zao3shang4 hao3! good morning Xxx, XxX, xxX, xXx, XXx, xXX,…

Simple sentences:

Wo3 zhu4 zai4 bei3jing1 xXxxX, XXxxX, XxxxX, XxxXx, XxXxx, etc.

Wo3 bu2 zhu4 zai4 bei3jing1 xXxxXx, XxXxXx, XxXxXx, xXX xXx, xXxXXX,… etc.

Wo3 zai4 bei3jing1 zhu4guo4 XxXxXx, xXxXXX, xxxXXx, xXxxXx, … etc.

wo3 jin1tian1 bu2 yao4 qu4 kan4 dian4ying3 xXxXXXXXx, xXXxXXXXx, xXxXxxxXx, …etc.

[Guest realmayo]

I'm not a native speaker.

I note that in your examples, the third tones are almost all unstressed, unless preceded by another third tone.

Consider your: Wo3 zhu4 zai4 bei3jing1 xXxxX,

I don't know if I agree with that stressing. But I'm pretty sure if it was Shang4hai3 and not Beijing, the last two stresses would be Xx, not xX.

I wonder if you're confusing tones with stress.

Also, does your informant speak good putonghua?

[skylee]

I wonder if this (i.e. analysing rhythm and its effects on syntax) is an essential part of learning beginner Chinese.

[Sibutlasi]

@realmayo #2:

Of course I am NOT confusing tones with stress, although I cannot be as sure as to whether my informant has/had clear concepts about those two aspects. All I can say is that, being an amateur musician, I did my best to explain to her first in full detail and with non-linguistic examples (melodies and rhythms) what I wanted her to judge. The 'test' was applied via Skype, although only once so far (I do not discard repetition in order to confirm her consistency). Obviously, I would have liked to do that with a good battery of full sentences, and I may do a bit later, but for the time being it seemed to me that that little collection might begin to tell me a few things if adequate evidence from native speakers could be obtained here.

@skylee #3:

Well, if somebody tries to convince you that examples you 'generated' with all your illusion following the rules of grammar and the lexicon are bad for rhythmic reasons only, don´t you think even a beginner like me should learn as soon as possible what prosodic principles are at play and what the FACTS are? Well, I do. Anyway, perhaps I am not your idea of a beginner - and, certainly, I do not have reasons to have in high esteem and respect the choices as to sequencing of content made in certain textbooks that I have seen - but I assure you that I AM a beginner in all respects that count for practical purposes. I wish I were not, but life is hard :-)!

[li3wei1]

the generalizations mentioned in Yip&Rimmington's chapter 26

Is this the Comprehensive Grammar you're referring to? maybe you could summarise these generalisations for those of us who are getting by with just the Essential Grammar.

I agree that a bit more emphasis on these 'rules' should be made in textbooks, maybe not at the beginner level but 2nd or 3rd year. I'm not sure it's stress that's important, however; more like number of syllables.

[Guest realmayo]

Okay, fair enough, look forward to seeing what conclusions you draw. Strikes me you're a bit incurious about the relations between tone and stress -- you might want to consider why almost all the fourth tones are stressed in your examples, and almost none of the third tones are. Presumably this changes when the words are parts of sentences rather than just a vocab list.

& you might want to consider a textbook that comes with a CD: you could listen to example sentences and work out what the stresses are there.

[roddy]

Beginning student, trying to second guess the textbooks, on the basis of one native speaker - and not even any native speaker, a native speaker you've made self-conscious about an aspect of speech which is normally entirely unconscious. From a region with different speech patterns to the standard used in said textbook. Over Skype. This is not a recipe for meaningful conclusions.

[OneEye]

If she's 50 and from southern Taiwan there's a very good chance that Mandarin isn't even her mother tongue. If it is (I assume you checked), I can nearly guarantee you it's heavily accented. In my experience, the Mandarin spoken in southern Taiwan tends to be heavily influenced by Taiwanese (f- becomes hu-, medials tend to be left out, etc., the so-called táiwān góyǐ 台灣國語 accent), and is quite distinct from that spoken in Taipei, which in turn is very distinct from the standard in China (more syllable-timed than stress-timed, for one). So, which variety of Mandarin are you wanting to learn?

I think you'd be better off actually learning the language before trying to dissect it with grammar rules though. It isn't a simple matter of "grammar + words = correct, idiomatic, acceptable language" (I've tried explaining that to my Taiwanese English students for the past year). Grammar is meant to describe, and it makes so much more sense if you actually understand the language being described first. And that's aside from the fact that a sentence can be perfectly grammatical and still be unacceptable, on the simple grounds of "that's just not how we say it."

[WestTexas]

Just my 2 cents, but I don't really see how this is all that important. As far as I know there isn't any consensus on what syllables are stressed/unstressed. Furthermore, I don't think it's something people are even aware of. There isn't even full consensus on Sandhi, something every textbook at least mentions. I think you're trying to look at Chinese like it's English, and it's not.

How are you even going to learn this if native speakers aren't even consistent about it? And why are you bothering if it's something native speakers don't even pay attention to? Maybe you should be worrying about vocabulary, listening skills, and grammar patterns instead.

[OneEye]

I'm also not convinced that prosody in Chinese is assessed the same way as it is in English. I believe it's more about the number of syllables (there is a distinct love of 4-syllable groupings, for example). Also, pay attention to what I mentioned in my last post about syllable- versus stress-timing in Mandarin. In Taiwanese Mandarin, most syllables get roughly the same amount of stress, because the tones are nearly all pronounced (this may account for so many XX's up there). Contrast this with standard 普通話 in China, where the abundance of neutral syllables affects sentence-level rhythm in a dramatic way.

You're also very likely, despite your protests to the contrary, to be confusing tone and stress, at least to a certain degree. Your ear for Mandarin just isn't developed enough yet, and your brain likely doesn't yet fully accept the idea that tone is an integral part of the syllable in Chinese. You may be hearing 飛機場 (which means airport, by the way, not airplane) as XXx due to the first two syllables being high, level, and clear, for example. I personally hear it as XXX.

All this, again, just points to the fact that you need to learn the language before trying to analyze it in such minute detail. You clearly have some interest, or even training, in linguistics, but this sort of dissection is not useful for actually learning to use the language, only for theoretical discussions of it (which are a whole lot more convincing if the person discussing it actually speaks the language).

[Sibutlasi]

@li3wei1 (#3)

Yes, that's the book I cited. I wonder why you (and Skylee #3, and , apparently, roddy#7!, and his six anonymous supporters!) think a beginner should content him/herself with learning the WRONG rhythms and then have to repair his/her pronunciation much later. Does that apply to Chinese only, or is it a didactic principle you would be prepared to defend in general? :-)

@realmayo (#2, #6)

My informant is a native speaker of Mandarin (I mentioned her living in Taiwan in case her accent might nevertheless be affected by that circumstance) who speaks near-native English and has two degrees form Taiwan's universities and an MA from a UK one. She knows I am interested in Mandarin only, and her pronunciation is, as far as I can tell, consistent with other sources I HAVE consulted - CDs that come with textbooks (What makes you think I have NOT?) , online dictionaries, online translation software, online text-to-speech software, etc. Also, I'm not in the least "incurious" about the relations between tone and stress, or do you think my choice of examples in #1 was random? I have already considered the fact you mention and a few others. And, obviously, I'm aware that inclusion in real sentences affects the stress patterns, sandhi, the melody, etc. (anybody who has read Chomsky&Halle, Halle&Vergnaud, Bruce Hayes, Nespor&Vogel, Burzio, Gussenhoven,.... etc., etc., knows, and I happen to be in that happy circle, do I have to apologize for that?). Now, I am learning Chinese (my way). Can you let me go step by step and stick to the question, if you have anything worth saying, or leave it alone to somebody who has, please?

@OneEye

My informant is OK, as explained above, and so far I have no access to a better one (a sinologist with DEEP knowledge of the language and of linguistic theory). As to your advice, thanks, but there are about have a dozen languages in which I am not a beginner at all, you see (plus two no longer spoken and some others I do not 'speak' but know interesting things about), and I happen to learn best if I do so rationally, taking advantage of tools that I have acquired, being a theoretical linguist (OK, you made me say it). I wonder what makes you think I ask before understanding the examples I raise questions about. And yes, a sentence can be grammatical and unacceptable, as Chomsky showed in his 1951 thesis, thank you for reminding me, but, if you are satisfied with your teacher telling you "that's just not how we say it", I am not. Obviously, most teachers available (I have tried about ten online ones so far) cannot go beyond that, but that is bad. I know, from over thirty years' teaching languages and linguistics, that it is possible to do rather better than that. OK?

Finally, @roddy

In Chinese, I'm a beginner, yes (or so I see myself). I know very little and I'm not trying to outwit anybody, but I have consulted the best Chinese grammars available in English since Chao's and I could easily cite dozens of 'generalizations' that do not resist minimal rational scrutiny, even my own scrutiny, a beginner with access mostly to examples cited in OTHER grammars, i.e., on "internal evidence". That is unfortunate, but true. Next, the examples in #1 do come from just one speaker, yes, but I never said that was the ONLY evidence I have, did I? Besides, my informant IS a native speaker, and a highly educated and literate one at that. Then, anybody who has done fieldwork or designed a psycholinguistic experiment knows that, unless you instruct informants to pay attention to what you want (or design foolproof experiments, which is impossible in this case), there is no way to obtain any evidence at all. Language is too many things at once. In this case, the 'instruction' was just a tutorial on what is stress and rhythm and what is pitch, melody, intonation, .... and it was based on non-linguistic evidence (rhythm, music, not Chinese expressions). And, if I may ask, what is wrong with first sending a questionnaire and then listening to a native speaker pronounce expressions over Skype? Why not over Skype, roddy?

Finally, I never pretended my conclusions to be meaningful in the sense of challenging extant wisdom, I just want to understand what happens in order to learn faster and more rationally myself. WHICH is, according to you, a recipe for meaningful conclusions in MY circumstances, roddy? Is it "You are a beginner, listen, imitate me and do not ask awkward questions, who do you think you are?", as language teachers said in the 1960s? Skylee seemed to be telling me something similar in #3. Well, I'm not buying that. If that is the attitude you want people in this forum to adopt, I'd better sign off immediately. Just tell me and I will vanish.

Let's not be SHALLOW, please! So far, I have only received perfectly useless admonitions. Can somebody stick to the question above instead of discouraging the asker? May I have some POSITIVE feedback on the question above from native, or sufficiently profficient speakers, please?

[Scoobyqueen]

Why would you want to highlight as reasons for wanting to know the intriciacies about prosody so early on in the learning process (which perhaps other learners leave till later) was because you are an amateur musician. But it later turns out you have over thirty years of experience in linguistics (if I read it correctly). Obviously with that background, you are,understandably, bound to immediately focus on your core subject when learning a new language.

It just helps understand more where you are coming from. But of course you are free to dislose any information you want. You might just consider that volunteering such facts may make it easier for people who are actually prepared to invest the time to comment on your pontifications.

Apologies if this sounds harsh. It is possible I have misunderstood your mission.

[Guest realmayo]

So far, I have only received perfectly useless admonitions.

Even what OneEye told you? Consider someone sat in Cairo learning Spanish. With a textbook he bought in Madrid. Talking on Skype with a friend in Mexico City. Won't there be any problems here? One key difference between textbook putonghua and how non-Northern Chinese speak it is the neutral tone. You haven't mentioned what you actually mean by stress in Chinese. Surely you mean something different than you would for stress in English? It makes more sense to focus on whether the tone on a syllable is fully pronounced or not. But, you can't analyse that properly if you've got a textbook giving you lots of neutral tones and a speaker on Skype who is not but instead is speaking what you call 'Mandarin' the way most people in Chinese speak it.

I think it's hard to answer your questions because they're not framed well. Like an ornithologist looking for feathers on an airplane.

[OneEye]

We can do just fine without the condescension, thank you.

Giving more details about your background earlier in the game would have helped others to know on what level to engage with you. Not doing so, and then making insulting accusations of shallowness and whatever else when we make our own decisions about how to engage, is very off-putting. At any rate, you're not likely to find people here who can discuss these questions at the academic level you seem to be hoping for. Few of us are academics, and for those few of us who are, fewer still are theoretical linguists. Even if I could go there with you, I don't know if there has even been much research into these questions anyway. What research there has been is likely to be in Chinese, not English (though a quick Google search shows that there's at least some out there in English). At least in my chosen field, Western scholars seem to be good at using the research, and not so good at making it accessible to non-Chinese speakers (裘錫圭’s 《文字學概要》, which is about as foundational to the field as you can get, is one rare counter-example, and that wasn't even translated until 16 years after publication).

I wonder what makes you think I ask before understanding the examples I raise questions about.

The fact that you don't speak the language. You're a beginner, despite your theoretical knowledge of the language. In my book, beginners don't understand the examples by definition. You may feel differently about that, and that's fine with me.

I trust that with the experience you've outlined, you may know what you're doing here. But insulting us (some of whom have considerable experience not only with this language, but with many others) for doubting whether your approach will be effective without first telling us of that experience...well, let's just say it doesn't exactly make me want to jump at the chance to help you.

All that said, I do have one book on my shelf that's somewhat relevant. 《汉语书面用语初编 Expressions of Written Chinese》 by 冯胜利, 2006, Beijing Language and Culture University Press. It's a handbook of formal written Chinese for non-native speakers at the "intermediate and advanced level" (whatever that may mean), which presents "written Chinese expressions incorporating new theories of prosodic grammar" (from the back cover). Of course, it's entirely in Chinese, except for word definitions. And I can find no citations inside, though I haven't looked thoroughly. That's about as far as I can help you, because my interests lie elsewhere.

[renzhe]

My guess is that he is a bored linguistics student writing his Master's thesis and trolling here for fun. Earlier, he asked a clarification on yes/no questions, and within three posts, he refused to accept any answer until I had clarified whether I was a Wittgensteinian pragmatist or a Quinean nihilist.

It's quite funny, really, we all fell for it. If he really needs to know the intricacies of rhythm and stress in modern Mandarin, he'll have to hit the journals, as it's likely the least researched and least well-understood part of the language, where the vast majority of native speakers do it by feeling and I'd wager that you'd have to be a professor in linguistics to know how exactly it works. I don't think that anyone here knows correct, hard, tested rules for this, and I'm pretty sure that nobody can answer them at the level the thread starter demands:

Unfortunately, when renzhe writes (in #20) "I maintain that "...ma" and "v+bu+v" said in exactly the same way in exactly the same situation between exactly the same people (of equal standing) mean exactly the same thing." he unwittingly begs the question: That kind of 'equivalence' is self-defeating (and so useless for testing purposes), because there is NO way to satisfy the first three "sames" in it.The problem is as old as Adam in philosophy; if somebody is really interested, W. van Orman Quine's "Two dogmas of empiricism" (1951)and Strawson's "Individuals" (1959)are two classics still worth reading.

He's just having a laugh, that's it.

[OneEye]

Well-spotted. I knew I sensed some ego-inflation going on, what with all the citations being hurled around.

I guess everyone needs it once in a while. It's interesting the way people go about it though.

[Sibutlasi]

Oh, dear! "Your pontifications" (#12) is a bit harsh, but the author at least apologizes. The author of (#13), on the contrary, feels he can get away with saying that my questions are not "framed well" (although, to judge from his posts in this and my other topics, he barely understands what I am talking about) and calls me "an ornithologist looking for feathers on an airplane". Well, if that makes him happy..., impunity has its advantages, :-). I more or less understand OneEye's reaction in (#14), and, as in some earlier answers of his, there is at least some attempt at saying something, but (#16) is really obtuse and MEAN: "ego-inflation"?, "everyone needs IT ONCE in a while"? ... In a forum like THIS? He must be kidding. That WAS insulting, but the real surprise was (15#). That is just too much, in all respects (gratuitous hostility, obtuseness, meanness). No, my dear friend, I'm sorry to disappoint you, I am not a student, nor bored, nor writing an MA thesis (Is that all I could be writing? Won't you grant me the status of a PhD student at least? :-), nor having a laugh, either. That shows how perceptive, and how learned, you are. It may be a convenient status-saving trick for you to discard serious questions and their askers in that mean way, but the truth is that you simply know much less than you think. The truth is very different: In this, as in my three other topics so far, I asked and answered in good faith, trying to contribute to the community. Some of the answers I saw suggested people with reasonable linguistic training, one or two members, including the author of (#15), directly asked me questions, or challenged some of my offhand statements, and so I myself answered back a bit more in earnest in some of my posts, but I never tried to impress anybody, nor insult anybody, and the reason why I rejected the 'explanations' offered by various people here was, simply, that they were not explanations, nor even convincing generalizations. The jargon I saw in some of them, however, led me to believe that this forum was more professional than it is, an error of judgment I regret, but that's all the malice there was, as far as I am concerned. It is ME that has been insulted here. But no more of that. To judge from my extremely short experience (four topics in less than a week), knowledge, there isn't much here, and meanness and hostility abound, so, good bye, folks. Enjoy yourselves!

[renzhe]

That shows how perceptive, and how learned, you are. It may be a convenient status-saving trick for you to discard serious questions and their askers in that mean way, but the truth is that you simply know much less than you think.

I neither know much, nor do I have any status to save. I'm simply a hobbyist with much less knowledge than most regular posters here. And I readily admit that I do not know what you are talking about. A more perceptive person would have noticed this and adjusted his language accordingly.

But please do not leave because of me! If you think that your approach is helping you learn and get answers, then go on, I'll stay out of it. You can continue your search for true meaning of "bu" with people more learned. I've already told you where to look -- journals and sinologists specialising in Mandarin grammar. Someone of your calibre surely has access to both, and this is what a linguist would do. You could find something like this or this. But I guess what you're doing is more effective -- hypothesising wild theories from one example, then lamenting that none of the comments are intellectual enough.

[Guest realmayo]

My guess is that he is a bored linguistics student

I'm more inclined to think he's an older gent with lots of experience of languages and linguistics who has decided to learn Chinese and wants to bring his knowledge to bear on this new language, but has been frustrated by the lack of English-language resources that deal with Chinese in the theoretical way he'd like to engage with it; and who saw this forum as the ideal sounding-board for the ideas and questions that naturally arise at the early stages of tackling the language; and who perhaps in his enthusiasm at the possibility of finally coming across kindred spirits and the desire to display his credentials actually spewed out a bit too much of that learning while at the same time asking questions which, as he progresses with the language, he'll see weren't particularly smart ones.

[陳德聰]

Wow... And here I thought maybe someone might actually be able to answer the question posed.

My first thought from seeing the results from this informant are that you may not have accounted for citational speech when you elicited the target phrases? (Yes I noticed that OP plans to not come back, but I am still interested in the question at hand)