A Study of the Tone Rules in Antonymy Co-occurrence of Four-character Idioms

Abstract

With quantitative analysis, this paper investigates the rules of tone and Ping-ze combination of the constituted morphemes in antonymy co-occurrence of four-character idioms. And it further analyzes the issues of four-character idioms regarding the constituted forms and tone modification. On the one hand, from the perspective of tone modification, four-character idioms generally comply with the regulation of four tone sequence, that is, “high and level tone, rising tone, falling-rising tone, falling tone”. AC and BD discriminate against same tone agreement; instead, they favor relevance of the distinct tones. Regarding Ping-ze combination, A mostly consists of level tones, and D of oblique tones. It indicates a tendency that oblique tones wind down when level tones arise. Meanwhile, the main trait of BD combination in level and oblique tones is that most cases are antithetical to each other, B is featured level tones, while D is oblique tones. On the other, there are altogether 16 types of Ping-ze combinations. Among them, the top three are “Ping Ping Ze Ze”, “Ze Ze Ping Ping”, and “Ze Ping Ze Ze”. These dominant collocation types have the characteristic of alternation of “Ping” and “Ze”. In light of the above, it suggests that it is unlikely to exchange the word sequence within the antonymy co-occurrence four-character idioms. In conclusion, the changing tones in antonymy co-occurrence four-character idioms are subject to and constrained by Ping-ze combination rules.