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26Особенности произнесения легкого тона китайского языка. Исследование с применением инструментального анализа
Вихрова Анастасия Юрьевна,
кандидат филологических наук, ведущий научный сотрудник, Институт стран Азии и Африки, Московский государственный университет им. М.В. Ломоносова E-mail: avikhrova@gmail.com
Правильное произнесение тонов китайского языка является краеугольным камнем в изучении его просодической структуры. Без этого невозможно представить овладение китайским языком. Несмотря на то, что какое-то время назад считалось, что изучение тонов носит необязательный характер, что китайцы и так поймут говорящего по контексту, общему смыслу фразы. Однако такой подход можно считать устаревшим и неуважительным по отношению к китайскому языку и его носителям. Актуальность исследования, описанного в статье, обуславливается тем, что на опыте были выявлены ошибки в произнесении "легкого" тона китайского языка. Обучающиеся китайскому языку часто путают его с первым или четвертым тоном, из-за чего их интонирование китайского текста становится не вполне корректным.
Ключевые слова: тоны, китайский, просодия, сандхи, спектрограмма.
Recently, the interest of linguists in phonetic and phonological research has shifted towards prosod-ic phenomena. And if earlier, segment units (sounds, syllables, phonetic words) came to the fore, now more and more researchers direct their gaze towards super-segmental or prosodic units (stress, tone and intonation). This does not seem to be an accident, because prosody is much closer to the semantic side of the language, it can literally be heard with the naked ear. The importance of studying prosody cannot be overestimated, because only by learning how to properly intonate, pronounce words and phrases, mastering the system of tones and accents, you can say that you are fluent in the spoken language.
Speaking about the Chinese language, each time is especially emphasized its main feature - the tonal character of the prosodic system. Indeed, the Chinese language cannot be thought of without tones. However, before considering the tones of the Chinese language, it is necessary to give some general definition of tone. So, what is tone? "The tone is a complex of melodic and a number of other characteristics associated with the linguistic unit ... The main of the intrasys-temic functions of tone is the expansion of the phonological inventory" [Kasevich, p. 8-9].
Tones in such languages exist to distinguish lexical and / or grammatical meanings. Tonal languages are widespread in Southeast Asia (Chinese, Vietnamese, Lao, Burmese and others), Africa (Nilotic, Kwa, Bantu), America (Mixtec, Mazatec, Trickei, and so on). In some tonal languages (for example, Sino-Tibetan) tones have predominantly lexical significance, in others they can also express grammatical differences (number or gender of nouns, verb tense, negation), for example, in duala (Bantu language): a mabola - "he gives" , amabola - "he gave" , in dinka (Nilotic language): rany - "wall" , pany - "walls" . In some languages (for example, in Serbo-Croatian) tones differ only in the stressed syllable; in this case, the tones are usually regarded as a kind of word stress. In languages where tones are common to all syllables, they are also called syllable accent. As you know, tonal systems are "poor" (for, Hausa) and "rich" (Vietnamese). Although the tones in these languages have the same functions, these functions are implemented in different languages. "Tones are usually used in those languages in which the absolute number of represented syllables is relatively small: in such languages there are strict restrictions on the structure of the syllable, hence the impossibility of a wide syllable variety. The available inventory of syllables in these conditions is objectively insufficient to form a dictionary of the required volume. Tones contribute to overcoming
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this difficulty, since their presence increases the syllabic inventory as many times as there are tones in the system" [Kasevich vB, p. 9].
Tone is a melodic variation in pitch (pitch characteristics) when pronouncing syllables, phonologically significant in language. The tone is realized in the form of raising or lowering the voice, which can be either unchanged (equal in pitch) throughout the syllable, or change from one pitch level to another. The number of such levels (registers) is different in different languages, but in general it usually does not exceed four (upper, two middle and lower). Tones that do not change case throughout a syllable are called even; those that change the register are called sliding (contour). The latter are grouped by directionality: unidirectional (ascending / descending), with bidirectional (ascending, descending / descending-ascending). For example, in Chinese, ma - "mother" (even tone), ma - "flax" (upward tone), ma - "scold" (downward tone), ma -"horse" (downward-upward tone). In some languages (for example, in Vietnamese), other signs are also important for distinguishing tones: intensity, duration, pharyngalization, the presence of a laryngeal stop. The implementation of tones can also depend on the quality of the consonants included in the syllable (for example, in the Tangut language, voiceless initial consonants are combined with a high register of a syllable tone, voiced ones - with a low one). High-altitude (tonal) voice modifications as an element of phrasal melody are characteristic of all languages, but not all have tones.
Syllabic prosody - tones - require special attention, since they are the basic units of all other levels of prosody. The linguistic study of tones involves the identification of their differential acoustic features involved in distinguishing the lexical meanings of linguistic units (morphemes, words).
In modern Chinese, in its colloquial form, putong-hua, there are 4 tones: 1st even, 2nd ascending, 3rd descending-ascending, 4th descending. However, there is another tone, which is clearly not paid enough attention to, but which, at the same time, causes certain difficulties for Chinese language learners. This is a neutral or "zero" tone. In Chinese this tone is called ^^ qingsheng "light tone" . This tone, as such, is not considered a separate tone, since it does not have a pronounced tone pattern and a fixed pitch (although in some studies it is called a fifth tone). In a neutral tone, either the second syllables in two-syllable words are pronounced, or, most often, auxiliary particles that stand at the end of a sentence or phrase and, as a rule, have lost their lexical meaning, gradually turning into grammatical indicators. This tone is pronounced in a light, fading voice. It appeared around the 17th-18th centuries and to some extent shook the entire prosod-ic system of the Chinese language.
"The appearance of a light tone was due to the morphological evolution of a two-syllable word, so that its second syllabic morpheme was gradually lexically discolored, turning into a formal (grammatical) morpheme - the suffix of nouns and verbs ... tone ... According to the most frequent estimates, about 10% of
the vocabulary of the modern Chinese language contains a morpheme of a light tone. The most remarkable thing is that in the Chinese language system there is an active and quite explicit process of formaliza-tion of significant syllabic morphemes, and, consequently, the expansion of the scope of the light tone" [Rumyantsev, p.215-216].
In the process of teaching Chinese, pupils and students often face the problem of correctly pronouncing a neutral tone. It is often perceived as the first or fourth tones, although their melodic contours differ significantly. The Chinese are great at hearing morphemes pronounced in a neutral tone; they can isolate them from the speech chain. If such morphemes are pronounced incorrectly, then the native speakers of the Chinese language will surely react, they may not even understand what the speaker means. That is why it is so important to learn how to pronounce neutral-tone morphemes correctly. In order to clearly see how a light tone works, what a melodic contour it has, a study was carried out using instrumental analysis. The research methodology is as follows: Chinese speakers (3 men and 2 women, ages 20 to 38) were asked to speak 5 preselected sentences containing neutral tone morphemes. Their utterances were recorded and processed in the Praat 6.1.05 speech analysis and processing program. Voice-overs were recorded at the Laboratory of Experimental Phonetics, ISAA, Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov. Further, the same announcers were asked to pronounce the other 5 sentences, which contained the same sounding morphemes as in the previous 5 sentences, but pronounced in different tones. Thus, we were able to compare the acoustic characteristics of the tones.
First 5 sentences:
№ tt^ o Ta quguo Beijing. "He went to Beijing."
EE STO, T BBS o Baba kanjian le xiongmao.
"Dad saw a panda."
iff ft^ T? Tamen zenme chulai le?
"Why are they already out?"
^ff] ^ A o Women shi Zhongguo ren.
"We are Chinese."
^ vAi° № NT renshi ta ma? "Do you know him?"
Second 5 sentences:
d-^MM o Xiao ma guo he. "A little horse is crossing the river."
^ ^^ Nainai jian bu jian laohu?
"Did Grandma see the tiger or not?"
MM 0&± ^ T o Mama jintian wan-shang jiu dian lai le. "Mom came at 9 o' clock tonight."
^ ^ □ M NT fangzi de men zhen da!
"The doors of your house are so big!"
tbS WW ^^ T o Zhe ci bTsai gege shibai le. "This time, the older brother lost the competition."
After the recording, the morphemes of interest to us (they are highlighted in the list of sentences) were cut out with the help of the Praat program. It is the realizations that we will compare on the spectrograms. It should be noted that it is inappropriate to give spec-
trograms of all implementations - we will only give the most successful options for different speakers.
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Men (neutral tone)
Mén
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Shi (neutral tone)
Lai (neutral tone)
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guo guo jian jian lai lái men mén shi sh!
Time (sec) 0,32 0,43 0,5 0,73 0,49 0,83 0,57 0,88 0,49 0,84
F0 (Hz) 212,2 274,3 189,3 238,6 186,8 197,5 205,9 193,9 187,9 227,3
Intensivity (dB) 73 77,3 71,9 76,3 67,4 71,4 76,7 76,4 69,9 73,2
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The summary table shows that the time of pronouncing words with a light tone is shorter than words with other tones, the average frequency F0 is also noticeably lower for words pronounced in a neutral tone. As for the intensity, this parameter varies depending on the sound environment of the studied syllable. This parameter probably requires further study. The most indicative is the line on the spectrogram, which demonstrates the movement of the melody (frequency F0). For syllables tinted with a neutral tone, it remains practically at the same level - the variation in the melody is minimal, while for syllables tinted with other tones, the situation is completely different.
FEATURES OF THE PRONUNCIATION OF A LIGHT TONE OF THE CHINESE LANGUAGE. RESEARCH USING INSTRUMENTAL ANALYSIS
Vikhrova A. Ju.
Moscow State University M.V. Lomonosov
Correct pronunciation of tones of Chinese language is a cornerstone in the study of its prosodic structure. Without this, it is impossible
to imagine mastering the Chinese language. Despite the fact that some time ago it was believed that the study of tones is optional, that the Chinese people will understand the speaker by the context, the general meaning of the phrase. However, this approach can be considered outdated and disrespectful towards Chinese language and its speakers. The relevance of the research described in the article is due to the fact that the experience revealed errors in pronouncing the "light" tone of Chinese language. Students who study Chinese language often confuse it with the first or fourth tone, which is why their intonation of the Chinese text becomes not quite correct.
Keywords Tones, Chinese, prosody, sandhi, spectrogram. References
1. Zadoyenko T.P., Khuan Shuin Nachal' nyy kurs kitayskogo ya-zyka. Chast' 1-5-ye izd., ispr. i dop. - M.: Izdatel' stvo VKN, 2015. - 304 s.;
2. Kasevych V.B. "Udareniye i ton v rechevoy deyatel' nosti" -L.: Izdatel' stvo Leningradskogo universiteta, 1990. - 248 s.;
3. Kaplun M.E. Tony i tonoritmika dvuslozhnogo slova v yoruba (analiz-sintez) - Avtoreferat doktorskoy dissertatsii -Institut vostokovedeniya RAN, 2000;
4. Rumyantsev M.K. Fonetika i fonologiya sovremennogo kitayskogo yazyka - M.: AST: Vostok-Zapad, 2007. - 302 s.
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