A study on the realization of pitch in Mandarin Chinese intonation
نویسنده
چکیده
--------------------------------------------------------ABSTRACT----------------------------------------------------------This study explores the pitch realization of utterances in spontaneous Chinese speech, and it is found that there is a great variation of the pitch ranges of intonation phrases. Most of them are about half of the speaker’s maximum pitch range, and the pitch register is usually in the lower part, which is due to the principle of economy. In an intonation phrase, owing to the mechanism of declination, tones always drop to a lower scale compared to the previous ones. Pitch tends to be high for intonation phrases at the initial position of a new topic, and low for those at the end position. Final lowering is common for intonation phrases, leading to increased pitch range for the final prosodic word.
منابع مشابه
Pitch scaling as a perceptual cue for questions in German
Recent studies on the intonation of German suggest that the phonetic realization may contribute to the signaling of questions. In a previous production study polar questions, alternative questions and continuous statements were found to differ by a gradual increase in pitch scaling of a phonologically identical final rising contour [1]. Based on similar findings for Dutch Haan [2] concludes tha...
متن کاملPerception of intonation in Mandarin Chinese.
There is a tendency across languages to use a rising pitch contour to convey question intonation and a falling pitch contour to convey a statement. In a lexical tone language such as Mandarin Chinese, rising and falling pitch contours are also used to differentiate lexical meaning. How, then, does the multiplexing of the F(0) channel affect the perception of question and statement intonation in...
متن کاملConfusability of Chinese Intonation
Do lexical tones interfere with the realization of intonation types? Given that tone and intonation both use F0 as a primary cue, can a listener reliably identify statements and questions when some of the channel capacity is taken up by lexical tones? We study this issue through a perception test on a carefully designed and obtained intonation corpus on Mandarin Chinese. Our study shows the fol...
متن کاملAcoustic Correlates of Hierarchical Prosodic Boundary in Mandarin
The aim of this paper is to present a systematical analysis of the acoustic correlates of hierarchical prosodic boundaries. This analysis is based on a large labeled corpus of Mandarin Chinese. The acoustic correlates include the lowest value of pitch and the duration of the silence. The prosodic structure is defined thanks to a perception experiment. The main results are : a) the declination o...
متن کاملIncreasing context: L2 production of English intonation by L1 Mandarin and L1 Spanish speakers
One of the uncontested linguistic uses of intonation is the marking of sentence-type. Intonation, however, can be a redundant cue to sentence type, as in English statements or absolute yes-no questions, or the only cue, as in declarative questions. We explore the realization of sentence prosody by advanced Spanish and Mandarin learners of English. Since the target-like realization of sentence p...
متن کامل