摘要
本文论证汉语有"词重音"(word stress)。虽然汉语的词重音在语音产生(production)或感知(perception)等层面都不显著,但笔者提出,确有直接及间接的证据支持汉语有词重音。具体理据如下:由于词重音是由音步(foot)这个韵律单位来表达的,因此,如果必须要诉诸音步才能解释汉语韵律现象的话,那么汉语自然就有词重音。本文立论的直接证据来自"并列双音词"的排序。简言之,至少到了现代汉语,其词序便不能随意变动,例如"手脚"与**"脚手"的区别等。学界目前公认(中古汉语的)"声调"是最重要的决定因素:"非入声"必先于"入声"。究其动因,笔者认为这样的规律就是为了符合扬抑格音步的"重轻"格局——因为非入声(音系重量"重")音长显著地长于入声(音系重量"轻")。对8278例的并列双音词语料库的统计结果证明,除了声调以外,还有数种语音性质的分布情形也显著地反映了扬抑格的"重轻"格局(如"声母送气与否"和"有无鼻韵尾"等)。其次,汉语具有音步的间接证据则为汉语中存在着轻声音节。本文提出轻声的弱化现象是其不被划入音步、缺乏韵律结构"保护"所致,与其他语言在非重音节发生的元音缩减等现象并无本质上的不同。此外,文献中颇具争议的北京话有不同程度重音格局的说法,如"左重""右重""不分/等重"等,笔者则认为不同程度的重音格局很有可能是源自不同的形态韵律结构。总之,本研究结果以语料库的量化数据为支撑表明了韵律结构—特别是音步这个韵律单位及其伴随的重音现象—是所有自然语言都具备的基本组件(building blocks)。汉语并不是例外,只是其展现重音的手段"与众不同"而已。
In this paper,I argue that there exists word stress in Mandarin Chinese,even though it is well-established that stress is not perceptually salient,nor is it instrumentally confirmed.The direct evidence comes from the existence of word-level footing in(disyllabic)coordinate compounds(e.g.,dà-xiǎo“big-small:size”),which is in many ways reminiscent of the so-called binominals in English(e.g.,bread and butter,trick or treat,etc.)since the word order is in general not reversable.More specifically,from a corpus of 8,278 coordinate compounds,it is found that the distributions of certain phonetic properties are significantly biased towards the initial syllable of these coordinate compounds,namely that(a)onset aspiration,(b)vowel lowness,(c)postnuclear glides,(d)nasal codas,and(e)Tone 1(high level tone:55),strongly suggesting that the disyllabic coordinate compounds do form a metrical constituent,or,a trochaic foot exhibiting a strong-weak stress contour.In other words,the head syllable of a trochaic foot attracts the above-mentioned properties if word order can be flexible(consider a more familiar example from English:bread and butter vs.??butter and bread,although the phrase-final word gets stress here).In addition to segmental evidence for footing,I also argue that the so-called neutral tone syllables constitute yet another evidence for the existence of foot in Mandarin Chinese.Precisely,the wellknown vowel reduction,lenition,and so on may result from the lexically-specified extrametricality of neutral tone syllables.I further entertain the possibilities that the more-than-binary stress patterns reported in previous impressionistic studies of Beijing Mandarin may well be attributed to gradient vowel reduction in an expanded prosodic structure using analytical constructs such as weakly-layered feet.In conclusion,the present study lends support to the view that the prosodic structure,in particular,foot,is present in all natural languages.By the same token,stress is overtly realized in Mandarin Chinese,albeit in a meager,non-canonical fashion.
作者
谢丰帆
Hsieh,Feng-fan(Taiwan Tsing Hua University)
出处
《韵律语法研究》
2021年第1期27-58,共32页
Studies in Prosodic Grammar
基金
台湾科技主管部门MOST 107-2410-H-007-049-专题研究计划资助成果
关键词
音步
词重音
短语重音
轻声
韵律结构
foot
word stress
phrasal stress
neutral tone syllable
prosodic structure
