Prosodic disambiguation of <em>wh</em>-indeterminates in Mandarin Chinese

This study focuses on naturally occurring ambiguous utterances like “Zhōngguóduì shuí yě dǎ-bù-guò” in Mandarin to if/how prosody is used for disambiguation of wh-indeterminates. The results our production suggest that wh-indeterminates are disambiguated prosodically. For the wh-region, interrogative readings distinguished from indefinite by having a longer duration and higher maximum pitch. pre-wh region, was observed when wh-word received left-dislocated. post-wh significantly greater pitch excursion reading than reading. In particular, novel finding compression wh-interrogatives line with what has been attested other wh-in-situ languages, such as Japanese Korean, which suggests shared prosodic mechanisms disambiguating languages.