ABSTRACT
This chapter is devoted to some relevant concepts in Prosodic Phonology. Section one of this chapter focuses on the prosodic units and the Prosodic Hierarchy and lists the linguistic realizations of this hierarchy in Chinese. Section two introduces the Relative Prominence Principle, the fundamental property of the prosodic mechanism, put forward by Mark Liberman in his doctoral dissertation in 1975. Then the next several sections concentrate on the various issues of prosody in Chinese, including the rhythm, the syllable structure and its prosodic weight, the tone and its prosodic function, the neutral tone as the prosodic variable, the stress (including the word stress) and the natural foot. Through the discussions of these issues, a clear picture of the prosody of Chinese is drawn and a solid foundation is laid for later chapters.
