2006/10/25

Liu, F. & Xu, Y. (2005). Parallel encoding of focus and interrogative meaning in Mandarin intonation. Phonetica, 62, 70–87.

Presentation: Sarah
Summary: Shelly

This study aimed to investigate the encoding mechanism in Mandarin for communicative functions (such as focus) to compose intonation (such as statements and interrogatives). By examining the F0 contour in different types of sentences with different focus locations, they wanted to answer the following questions: (1) How does focus interact with interrogative meaning? (2) What are the basic constituents of question intonation? (3) Are there F0 differences in different types of questions (such as yes/no question and wh-question and so on)? (4) Can native listeners perceive the sentence type and the focus location simultaneously? Two experiments were conducted. In experiment 1, native Mandarin speakers were asked to produce different types of sentences (ex. statements, yes/no questions, and wh-questions ) with narrow focus on the initial, medial, and final word of the sentences. Results of analysis showed that final pitch raising is greater in yes/no question and rhetorical questions than in confirmation and wh-question (answer for research question (3)), and this kind of raising is double exponential (answer for research question (2)). Also, the pitch raising in questions will be boosted at the location of the focus (answer for research question (1)). Experiment 2 was designed to see whether listeners could detect both focus and interrogative meaning in the same utterance. Results showed that the two functions were identifiable, but confusion did happen when listeners listened to interrogative sentences with neutral focus and final focus (answer for research question (4)). This confusion might result from the competing F0 adjustments by interrogative meaning and focus at the sentence-final position. According to the above findings, this study successfully demonstrates the parallel encoding of sentence meaning (question) and communicative function (focus).