The article delves into the application of the Language into Act Theory (L-AcT) to spontaneous spoken Chinese, leveraging the C-ORALZHONG corpus for empirical evidence. L-AcT suggests that the structure of spoken language is heavily shaped by illocutionary pragmatic principles, with prosody playing a key role in delineating speech units such as Utterances and Stanzas, which are essential for grasping the organization and significance of spoken discourse. The study’s objective is to affirm the applicability of L-AcT’s principles within the realm of Chinese speech. Utilizing the C-ORAL-ZHONG corpus, the research scrutinizes the interplay between prosody and information structure in spoken Chinese. The paper methodically outlines the L-AcT theoretical framework, detailing its foundational concepts and the methodologies used for analyzing speech. It proceeds to describe the composition of the C-ORAL-ZHONG corpus, the transcription techniques employed, and the software tools utilized for prosodic analysis. Quantitative data from the corpus is presented, highlighting the distribution of reference units and the occurrence of different speech structures. The study also explores the significance of the Topic-Comment structure in spoken Chinese, emphasizing the language’s characteristic as Topic-prominent. The L-AcT methodology is applied to identify reference units within the speech continuum and to segment these into smaller information units based on prosodic cues. The analysis is supported by advanced software tools that ensure precise prosodic annotations in alignment with the transcribed text.
The findings reveal that simple Utterances are the predominant reference units, with complex Utterances, Stanzas, and Illocutionary patterns also present, and interrupted Utterances contributing to the corpus. The distribution of these units shows variation across different communicative contexts. Topics emerge as a notable element in Chinese discourse, with a substantial proportion of reference units incorporating Topics, and an even greater percentage when considering all units that could potentially contain a Topic.
In conclusion, the study offers empirical backing for the use of L-AcT in analyzing Chinese speech, enriching our comprehension of how prosody influences the structure of spoken language and highlighting the pivotal role of Topics in Chinese discourse.