A Phonetic Study on Chanting of Chinese Five Syllable Modern-style Poems

This paper analyses the chanting of 21 fivesyllable modern-style poems, which is Chinese traditional style of poem reciting which has long history and special melody. The phonetic analysis of chanting and its relationship with poetic metrics has not yet been fully studied. This paper is to find out the prosodic hierarchy according to pause duration, and probe the phonetic features and methods of chanting. Results reveal that pause exists after “level-level” tonal combinations, which is a kind of metrical pattern of Chinese poetry. The duration of syllables doubles in sentence final position. An exclamation is added when the sentence ends with a checked syllable. The pitch of syllables with level tone is lower than that of syllables with oblique tones, alternation of level and oblique tones forms the chanting melody. Sentences and poems with same metrical pattern have the same chanting melody.