Phonetic manifestation and influential factors of pronominal anaphoric word “TA” in Chinese reading texts

The present paper conducts a pioneering exploration on the phonetic manifestation and of pronominal anaphora and influential factors in Chinese reading texts, taking the third personal pronoun “ta” as example. The F₀ and duration of “ta” of varied types are compared; also, the stress degrees of “ta” and its surrounding syllables are examined. The results demonstrate that: i) syntactic position plays a prominent role in the phonetic manifestation of “ta” ii) the stress pattern of “ta” and its surrounding syllables reflects the prosodic integration of “ta” in its current sentence and the interactive relationship between syntax and prosody; iii) textual level, information structure, emotion, focus and individual characteristics can all be factors that accounts for the phonetic variations of “ta” and the disparities of the stress pattern between “ta” and its surrounding syllables.