Individual differences in Mandarin focus production (original) (raw)

Revisiting focus production in Mandarin Chinese: Some preliminary findings

The 10th International Conference on Speech Prosody, 2020

Prosodic focus has been well documented in many languages, and various acoustic cues have been identified in focus production. However, the issue of focus domain has not been thoroughly studied. This study investigated the production of prosodic focus in Mandarin declarative sentences, and designed stimuli with complex sentence subjects and with different focus widths. Eleven native speakers of Mandarin participated in the recording experiment. Production data with various focus conditions were elicited with precursor questions and then analysed with linear mixed-effects modelling. Our data revealed focus-induced change of F0, duration and intensity values in pre-focus, on focus and post-focus regions. The results suggest that focus size may not interfere with focus realisation in Mandarin. Concerning the role of F0 range in Mandarin focus marking, we provided conflicting results compared with previous studies. Moreover, it is suggested that focus realisation in non-sentence-final positions and within complex nominal phrases should be considered for a better understanding of focus domain.

English Focus Perception by Mandarin Listeners

Languages, 2019

This study compared how well native Mandarin and native English speakers can perceive prosodically marked focus in English echo questions. Twenty-five yes-no echo questions were produced with a sentence focus, a verb focus, and an object focus. After hearing each sentence, they were asked to choose a correct response. Native English listeners were more accurate than native Mandarin on verb and object focus, but not on sentence focus. More importantly, both groups confused object focus with sentence focus and vice versa. However, confusion between object and verb focus, and between object and sentence focus was infrequent. These results suggest that, in some cases, (1) acoustic prominence on the head of a phrase or its internal argument can project to the entire phrase and make the entire phrase focused, and (2) parallel transmission of the two functions of intonation, and cross-linguistic variation in focus marking (prosodically versus syntactically) may contribute to their perceptual ambiguity.

Cross-language data on five types of prosodic focus

Speech Prosody 2016, 2016

To examine the relative roles of language-specific and language-universal mechanisms in the production of prosodic focus, we compared production of five different types of focus by native speakers of English and Mandarin. Two comparable dialogues were constructed for each language, with the same words appearing in focused and unfocused position; 48 speakers recorded two dialogues each in their respective native language. Duration, F 0 (mean, maximum, range), and rmsintensity (mean, maximum) of all critical word tokens were measured. Across the different types of focus, cross-language differences were observed in the degree to which English versus Mandarin speakers use the different prosodic parameters to mark focus, suggesting that while prosody may be universally available for expressing focus, the means of its employment may be considerably language-specific.

Comparison of English narrow focus production by L1 English, Beijing and Taiwan Mandarin speakers

2012 International Conference on Speech Database and Assessments, 2012

L1 English and two varieties of L1 Mandarin English speech data were extracted from the Taiwan AESOP corpus (Asian English Speech cOrpus Project) for the purpose of investigating differences in the realization of English narrow focus by L1 speakers of North American English, Taiwan Mandarin and Beijing Mandarin. Results show the combined effect of two patterns of L2 focus production: general underdifferentiation of on-focus and post-focus contrasts, which was exhibited by both L2 speaker groups, and transfer of L1-specific prosodic features, which can be argued to represent the source of difference between the two L2 groups. Overall, on-focus/post-focus contrasts in mean F0, amplitude and pitch range were realized most robustly by L1 English speakers. L1 Taiwan Mandarin speakers produced a smaller increase in mean F0 and amplitude for on-focus constituents and much smaller decrease in mean F0 and amplitude on post-focus constituents than L1 English speakers did, whereas Beijing Mandarin speakers produced no increase in mean F0 in on-focus constituents, and the smallest decrease in mean F0 on post-focus constituents, but a 35% higher post-focus compression of intensity than Taiwan Mandarin speakers did. Notably, both L2 speaker groups failed to produce post-focus compression of pitch range, which has been shown to be a highly salient cue to the presence of focus in English.

Prosodic focus marking in Dali Mandarin

Tonal Aspects of Languages 2016, 2016

This study investigated prosodic marking of focus in Dali Mandarin, a variety of Xinan Guanhua (Southwestern Mandarin) spoken in Dali city, the capital of Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture, China. Dali Mandarin as a variety of Mandarin has had heavy contact with Bai, a Tibeto-Burman language, for a long time. We adopted a semi-spontaneous experimental approach to elicit SVO sentences with different focus conditions. Our data showed that native speakers of Dali Mandarin lengthened the duration of focal constituents compared to non-focal constituents for marking focus. However, they did not use duration to distinguish focus types differing in size and contrastivity. Further, pitch played no role at all in signaling focus, or in differentiating focus types. These results thus suggested that Dali Mandarin speakers use prosody by exploiting duration to mark focus. Therefore, the encoding of focus in Dali Mandarin is more similar to Bai than to Beijing Mandarin, the latter being genetically more closely related to Dali Mandarin. This result suggests that prosodic focus marking in Dali Mandarin has been influenced by Bai due to the heavy language contact.

Effects of Focus on Duration and Intensity in Chongming Chinese

Proceedings of The 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 2019

Prosodic focus is generally realised by expanded pitch range, lengthened duration and increased intensity on the focused components, while the post-focus components may be associated with a compressed pitch range and intensity, which is referred to as post-focus compression (PFC). However, controversy surrounds whether PFC exists cross-linguistically, and detailed studies on how focus influences duration and intensity are scarce. This study aims to contribute novel data to the prosodic typology literature by examining the effects of focus on duration and intensity in Chongming Chinese (CC). Twenty target words were embedded under different focus conditions, and the production data were submitted for linear-mixed effects models. Our results showed focus-induced change of duration and intensity (i.e., lengthened duration and a larger intensity range under focus) as well as PFC of duration and intensity range in CC.

Production and Perception of Tone 3 Focus in Mandarin Chinese

Frontiers in psychology, 2016

This study uses production and perception experiments to explore tone 3 focus in Mandarin Chinese. Overall, contrastive focus in Mandarin is clearly marked with increased duration, intensity, and pitch range: in the experiments, listeners identified focused syllables correctly more than 90% of the time. However, a tone 3 syllable offers a smaller capacity for pitch range expansion under focus, and also yields less intensity increase; in addition, local dissimilation increases the duration, intensity, and pitch range of adjacent syllables within the same phrase as a focused tone 3 syllable. As a result, tone 3 focus was less well identified by listeners (77.1%). We suggest that the relatively poor identification of tone 3 focus is due to the smaller capacity for pitch range expansion, the confusion from within-phrase local dissimilatory effects, and the relatively weak intensity of tone 3. This study demonstrates that even within a language where purely prosodic marking of focus is c...

Focus encoding and prosodic structure in Shanghai Chinese

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2017

This paper investigated the phonetic effects of contrastive focus on F0, duration, and intensity patterns in disyllabic groups which undergo left- and right-dominant sandhis in Shanghai Chinese, in order to further the authors' understanding of the nature of a left-/right-dominant sandhi and the relation between focus encoding and prosodic structure. Results showed that the left-dominant sandhi was characterized by tone rightward spreading and formed one prosodic word, while the right-dominant sandhi was characterized by phonetic reduction and formed one prosodic phrase. Furthermore, F0 adjustment patterns induced by focus were different in the two sandhis, which indicated that focus was encoded via the prosodic structure.

Focus Acoustics and Prosodic Organization in Hong Kong Cantonese and Taiwan Mandarin

ICPhS, 2019

The acoustic realization of focus can be influenced by the position of a focalized word in a larger constituent and by constraints on prosodic organization of an utterance. Here, we report four production studies that explore the potential effects of local prosodic organization on the realization of focus in Hong Kong Cantonese (HKC) and Taiwan Mandarin (TwM). The materials consisted of sentences in which a syntactic subject noun phrase (consisted of monosyllabic numeral, classifier, and noun) expressing either corrective or wh focus. The span of the focus constituent within such an NP was controlled using short conversations indicating either (i) the numeral only focus, (ii) the noun only focus, or (iii) the whole noun phrase focus. Our results showed that the acoustic realization of focus in HKC and TwM extends beyond general acoustic highlighting of focus constituents, i.e., the acoustic realization of focus in HKC and TwM are influenced by constraints of prosodic organization.

Effects of Prosodic Focus on Voice Onset Time (VOT) in Chongming Chinese

2019

Prosodic focus is phonetically realized by increasing intensity, extending duration, and expanding pitch rage of focused components (Xu et al., 2012). Previous studies have also found the effect of prosodic focus on enlarging two-way or three-way stop contrast by lengthening the VOT (voice onset time) of voiceless or aspirated consonants (e.g. Choi, 2003; Chen, 2011). The present study investigates the influence of prosodic focus on the realization of VOT of an under-studied language, Chongming Chinese. Twelve monosyllabic words were selected and embedded in carrier sentences with different discourse conditions: one baseline neutral focus condition and three focus conditions. Precursor questions were prepared to elicit production from native speakers of Chongming Chinese. Results showed the significant main effects of stop types and discourse conditions on VOT realization. VOTs were shortened in unaspirated and voiced stops in the on-focus condition, suggesting a different way of ex...