A comparative study ofdownstep: downstep by phrases in German, downstep by focus in Mandarin Chinese, and downstep by tones in Yoruba.

本研究从实验角度探讨了降格现象的普遍性和语言特殊性。这一现象在理解许多声调语言和语调语言的实际口语旋律中起着核心作用。它位于语音表征（声调、重音、焦点、韵律成分）和语音实现（基本频率的实际高度，被感知为句子旋律的高度1）的界面。本文对三种语言进行了比较研究，每种语言都代表了所研究主题的不同语言类别：(a)普通话，一种由于句法/语义焦点而表现出降级的声调语言；(b)德语，一种语调语言，由于分句的短语韵律结构而表现出降调；(c)约鲁巴语，西非使用的一种声调语言，对某些声调结构作出降调反应。对这三种语言的相关问题进行了调查；通过比较研究，我们可以对降格的一般性质以及降格的普遍性和语言特殊性有新的认识。

The proposed research experimentally investigates universal and language-specific properties of the phenomenon of downstep. This phenomenon is central in the understanding of the actual spoken melody of many tone languages as well as of intonation languages. It is located at the interface of the phonological representation (tones, stress, focus, prosodic constituents) and the phonetic realization (actual height of the fundamental frequency; perceived as height of the sentence melody1). Three languages are investigated comparatively, each representing a different class of languages in regard to the topic under investigation: (a) Mandarin Chinese, a tone language that shows downstep as a consequence of syntactic/semantic focus; (b) German, an intonation language that shows downstep as a consequence of the phrasal prosodic configurations of a clause; (c) Yoruba, a tone language spoken in West Africa, that shows downstep in response to certain tonal configurations. Investigations of related questions on all three languages exist; the comparative investigation promises new insights into the nature of downstep in general and into its universal and language-specific properties.