Publication details
The Prosodic Hierarchy in Standard Chinese : A Proposal for a New Tier
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2025 |
| Type | Peer-reviewed scientific article |
| Magazine / Source | STUDIA ORIENTALIA SLOVACA |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| web | svazek Studia Orientalia Slovaca |
| Keywords | prosody; prosodic superword; standard chinese; prosodic word; prosodic phrase |
| Attached files | |
| Description | This paper examines prosodic units in Standard Chinese. In discussing the function and behavior of prosodic units in the flow of speech, their adequacy must be given special consideration. Through corpus analysis, we identified the existence of a distinct and necessary new prosodic unit. Within the widely used hierarchy of prosodic units, this new unit occupies the position between the prosodic word and the prosodic phrase. We have provisionally named it as the prosodic superword (PSw). The PSw shows a closer union of two (or, in rare cases, three) prosodic words and helps to keep the prosodic analysis consistent. Its occurrence in a sentence reflects the behavior of prosodic words in the event of increased speech tempo. The introduction of this new unit increases the variability of spoken sentence realization and provides a means to prosodically express different semantic meanings. This paper focuses on the analysis of PSws, especially the number of syllables that form a PSw, their combination in a PSw, and the position of PSws within sentences. |