Teaching Mandarin pronunciation: the cliticoids and basic types of phonetic chunks

0450108 - OÚ 2016 RIV CZ eng K - Conference Paper (Czech conference)
Třísková, Hana
Teaching Mandarin pronunciation: the cliticoids and basic types of phonetic chunks.
The 8th annual Czech and Slovac sinological conference 2014 – proceedings. Olomouc: Palacký University Olomouc, 2015 - (Lavička, M.; Rysová, M.), s. 1-228. ISBN 978-80-244-4827-5.
[The 8th annual Czech and Slovac sinological conference. Olomouc (CZ), 07.11.2014-08.11.2014]
Institutional support: RVO:68378009
Keywords : Mandarin Chinese * pronunciation * phonetics * clitics * function words * language teaching
Subject RIV: AI - Linguistics
http://chinet.cz/publications/proceedings/the-8th-annual-czech-and-slovak-sinological-conference-2014-proceedings/

The paper is concerned with an important group of Chinese words, belonging to the high frequency items of the lexicon: monosyllabic function words such as prepositions, personal pronouns etc. They carry lexical tone, thus have a potential to be stressed. Yet, due to their deficiency in lexical meaning and frequent usage, they regularly behave as unstressed (and phonetically reduced) in connected speech. They receive stress (i.e. full pronunciation) only occasionally, particularly if emphasised. A new term is coined for these words: “the cliticoids”. The author provides their list and reviews the pitfalls of their pronunciation, observing that the Chinese cliticoids display similar features as so called “words with weak forms” found in English. Finally, short (2–3 syllabic) chunks of speech which contain the cliticoids are introduced. They are particularly designed for exercising the unstressed, reduced pronunciation of the cliticoids in L2 teaching. They are termed “phonetic chunks”.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0255553