Towards a Pan-Mandarin System for Prosodic Transcription

Abstract

This chapter describes the initial stages of development of a Pan-Mandarin ToBI system. It reviews the salient prosodic characteristics of Mandarin, such as lexical tones, tone sandhi, tonal neutralisation, stress patterns, pitch range effects, and prosodic groupings above the syllable level. Particular attention is paid to the range of variability within a common structural core, in addition to points of reference to other varieties of Chinese and to other languages. It then proposes a codification of conventions for marking prosodic structure and an inventory of tones in two standard varieties (i.e. Putonghua of Mainland China and Guoyu of Taiwan) and one regional variety of the language (i.e. Rugaohua, a Jianghuai Mandarin variety). Also built into the system is the capability to accommodate interactions, such as code-switching events, between different varieties of Mandarin and perhaps between Mandarin and other varieties of Chinese (and other languages) in different social contexts.

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