CHEN Yudong1,2 LV Shinan3 YANG Yufang1

(1 Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academic of Science Beijing 100101)

(2 Communication University of China Beijing 100024)

(3 Institute of Acoustics, Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing 100190)

Received Mar. 24, 2009

Revised Apr. 23, 2009

Abstract  By analyzing the acoustic data of a Chinese news report,the present research explores the pattern of how to change syllable duration and pitch of stress when isolated clauses are connected into a discourse.Comparing the same clause between isolated and in discourse context,the pitch variation of the clause nucleus can be most manifests,i.e.the top points as a whole fall remarkably;furthermore the degree of pitch falling varies with different kinds of stresses.When clause stresses are not assigned the status of discourse stress,they show a weakening effect of stress;it means pitch falling and syllable duration shortening.In a discourse composed of several clauses,speakers can modulate clause prosody by varying the strength of stresses;thereby realize the overall control of the discourse prosody and exact semantic expression.The findings on phonetic material from broadcast will shed light on the teaching of news broadcasting and contribute to the prosodic control of Chinese Putonghua synthesis.

PACS numbers: 43.70