Prosodic Realization of Focus in Statement and Question in Tibetan (Lhasa Dialect)

The present study investigated prosodic realization of focus in statement and yes/no question in Tibetan (Lhasa dialect). Two target sentences were uttered by 8 speakers in both statement and yes/no question under four focus conditions, initial, medial, final and neutral focus. Systematic acoustic analysis showed that: (1) On-focus words exhibited significant F0 rising, pitch range expansion, and duration lengthening, while pitch range of pre-focus words remained largely intact. Importantly, focus led to post-focus F0 lowering and compression. Focus was realized the same way in both statement and question. (2) Interrogative intonation had higher F0 than statement in unfocused words. In general, the prosodic realization of focus in Tibetan was comparable to English and Beijing Mandarin. The distribution and origin of post-focus compression (PFC) was also discussed.