IOSR Journal of Engineering (IOSRJEN) e-ISSN: 2250-3021, p-ISSN: 2278-8719 Vol. 3, Issue 9 (September. 2013), ||V1|| PP 10-15 www.iosrjen.org 10 | P a g e A Study on the Pitch Range in the Context of Downstep in Chinese Maolin Wang, Guangling Zi (College of Chinese Language and Culture, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China) Abstract: - In this study, the realization of pitch range of tones in the context of downstep in Chinese is analyzed. The test sentences are composed of „High + Low + High + Low‟ sequences, and it is found that, compared to utterance with 2 HL sequences, the overall pitch ranges of longer utterances are great. The pitch range of the last HL sequence is the greatest, and that of the first HL sequence is the second greatest, with that near the middle of the utterance to be the least great. The pitch range of the utterance initial HL sequence of shorter utterance tends to be greater than that of longer ones, and those of the final HL sequences of long and short utterances approach a constant value. Keywords: - Downstep, pitch, speech, tone, utterance I. INTRODUCTION Downstep, which refers to the stepwise lowering of High (H) tones in certain contexts, was originally observed in the tone languages in Africa. It is found that there are two types of downstep, automatic downstep and nonautomatic downstep. In the former case, H tones are lowered in sequences of alternating H and Low (L) tones, and in the latter case, often noted as H ! H, there is no overt conditioning L tone between the two H tones [1]. In downstep, each successive H tone in longer downstepping sequences is lower than the preceding one, creating a cumulative „staircase‟ pattern [2]. Besides downstep, there are other principles that contribute to pitch lowering, which must be carefully distinguished from downstep, such as declination, which is a continuous, long-term pattern of pitch decline across the utterance. Unlike declination, downstep is localized at specific junctures and is usually conditioned by the tonal, lexical, morphological, or syntactic structure of the utterance in which it applies, often serving distinctive or demarcative functions. It is shown that downstep is a common phenomenon in tone languages, so speakers may employ „foresight‟ in producing long downstepping sequences. Stewart [3] claimed that the pitch of H tones in downstepping sequences in Akan is sensitive to the number of following downsteps. He stated that the pitch of any particular high tone is raised by as many levels as there are downsteps in the subsequent part of the phrase, while the last H tone in the sequence tends to be realized at a constant level, its basic pitch. On the contrary, Schachter [4] maintained that the pitch of the first H tone in Akan is normally phonetically the same regardless of the number of the following downsteps, while later H tones descend to lower and lower values as the number of downsteps increases. There have been a number of studies related to tonal downstep in Chinese. Xu [5] argued that anticipatory and carry-over tonal influences co-exist in Chinese, and they differ both in magnitude and in nature. Carry-over effects are mostly assimilatory: the starting F0 of a tone is assimilated to the offset value of a previous tone. Anticipatory effects, on the other hand, are mostly dissimilatory: a low onset value of a tone raises the maximum F0 value of a preceding tone. Shih [6] pointed out that the F0 contour of a Chinese utterance is affected by a number of factors, such as declination, downstep and final lowering, etc. Huang et al. [7] examined downstep in Chinese by subtly designed sentences. It is found that, when there is intervening low tone, it will compress the pitch range of the following syllable. It is the top line that is mainly affected, and the bottom line keeps unaffected. When there is no intervening low tone, the top line of the intonational phrase is realized in a linear downward trend. The experiment reported here will investigate the pitch range of utterances with 2 to 5 HL sequences, i.e. utterances with 4 to 10 syllables, and the aim is to find out the pitch range realization in the context of downstep. The following questions are addressed: (a) Does the overall pitch range of the utterances expand as the number of downsteps increases? (b) Are there variation of pitch ranges of the HL sequences at different position of the utterance? (c) Does the initial HL sequence expand as the number of downsteps increases? (d) Does the final HL sequece expand with more downsteps?