The Influence of Reading Styles on Accent Assignment in Mandarin

This paper investigates the influences of three different reading styles ( Lyric, Critical and Explanatory) to the distribution tendency of sentential accents (classified as rhythmic accent and semantic accent). The comparison among multiple styles is performed in three research domains: high-level constructions, low-level phrases and disyllabic prosodic words. One finds that the assignment of semantic accents shows some differences across reading styles, while the assignment of rhythmic accents does not. Furthermore, the larger the speech unit studied, the stronger the influence is observed, i.e. most differences in the assignment of semantic accents are shown in high-level constructions, some are shown in low-level phrases, and none are shown in prosodic words across the three reading styles. Compared with previous studies, the allocation scheme of semantic accents in the Explanatory style is close to that in the neutral style, i.e. in high-level constructions, it has a final-accented tendency in theme + rheme (TR), predicate + object(PO) and subject + predicate(SP) constructions, and uniform distribution in adjunct + head constructions. In low-level phrases, the Explanatory style exhibits an initial-accented tendency in adjunct + head phrases, but a final-accented tendency in subject + predicate (SP) phrases and predicate + object (PO) phrase. The Critical style is adopted to make comments, where semantic focal points are normally on the core subjects and their actions. As a result, more accents are allocated to the subject part in the AS constructions and to the predicate part in the PO constructions. Accordingly, in low-level phrases, more accents go to the heads in AN phrases and the predicates in SP phrases. The Lyric style helps to express personal emotions in a rhythmic way [Wang 2000]. Such poetry-like rhythm weakens the effect of syntactic constrains, and in many cases, leads to an even distribution of semantic accents in high-level constructions and dense distribution near prosodic boundaries.