Discourse functions of duration in Mandarin: resource design and implementation

A dedicated resource, consisting of annotated speech data, tools, and workflow design, was developed for the detailed investigation of discourse phenomena in Taiwan Mandarin. The discourse phenomena have functions which are associated with positions in utterances, and temporal properties, and include discourse markers (‘NAGE’, ’NA’, e.g. ‘hesitation’, ‘utterance initiation’), discourse particles (‘A’, e.g. ‘utterance finality’, ‘utterance continuity’, ‘focus’, etc.), and fillers (‘UHN’, ‘hesitation’). The distribution of particlers in relation to their position in utterances, and the temporal properties of particles are investigated. The results of the investigation diverge considerably from claims in existing grammars of Mandarin with respect to utterance position, and show in general greater length than for regular syllables. These properties suggest the possibility of developing an automatic discourse item tagger.