Prosodic studies in China

The purpose of the article is to provide a theoretical overview of the contribution made by Chinese phoneticians into the study of syllable, word and phrasal prosody. The major material was comprised by articles, books and dissertations examining the manifestation of a number of prosodic components in Chinese: pitch, intensity, duration and the patterns of their interaction. The works by Russian (Soviet) and western researchers on the prosody of Chinese and other languages were taken as additional material. In the course of study, literature analysis was performed, and the results of previous studies were compared. The analysis showed that prosodic studies in China date back to 1929, and since that time the researchers have been working on the interaction patterns of lexical tones and intonation viewing both as a complex of prosodic parameters. This trend was common with the phonetic views shared by Russian (Soviet) and Western researchers. Dwelling on classifications of prosodic parameters and intonation units well-known in the world, Chinese phoneticians, however, have always stressed the specifics of their native language as a tonal language focusing on the differences of the interaction patterns of word prosody and phrasal prosody in Chinese and Indo-European languages. The studies of the role of prosody as an emotive means on Chinese material began not long ago. However, during a relatively short period, the researchers have accumulated important data on prosodic parameter variation concerning, first of all, pitch variation depending on emotionality level.