Shen, X. (1993). Relative duration as a perceptual cue to stress in Mandarin. Language and Speech, 36(4), 415–433.
Presentation: Sarah
Summary: Chris
Since F0 plays an important role in tone distinction, the author proposed that F0 should be less important for detecting stress. One goal of this study was to investigate whether F0 is an important cue for detecting stress in Mandarin. The second goal is to see whether other cues, such as duration or intensity, were determining factors for stress detection. Results of Experiment 1 showed that duration alone was sufficient for listeners to determine the stress position of Mandarin. F0 was not a necessary element in stress detection. Furthermore, ‘stressed’ responses correlated more with duration than intensity. In Experiment 2, more subjects were recruited to achieve greater generality. However, there seemed to be missing links between duration and stress. Acoustic analyses showed that stress and duration had no one-to-one correlation if final lengthening was taken into consideration. That is, stressed finals were not necessarily longer than unstressed finals. Similarly, longer finals were not necessarily judged as stressed syllables. One possible explanation might be that listeners were able to compensate for the final lengthening effect in their perception. Experiment 3 used reiterant speech to control for intrinsic durational differences of segments. Without this cue, stress could still be indentified reliably in the utterances. The conclusion was that duration alone is sufficient in stress detection. However, one could not say that the role of F0 is not important. All factors, including segmental and prosodic ones, act aggregately to make prominence. No single factor along any prosodic dimension is an exclusive cue to stress.
Presentation: Sarah
Summary: Chris
Since F0 plays an important role in tone distinction, the author proposed that F0 should be less important for detecting stress. One goal of this study was to investigate whether F0 is an important cue for detecting stress in Mandarin. The second goal is to see whether other cues, such as duration or intensity, were determining factors for stress detection. Results of Experiment 1 showed that duration alone was sufficient for listeners to determine the stress position of Mandarin. F0 was not a necessary element in stress detection. Furthermore, ‘stressed’ responses correlated more with duration than intensity. In Experiment 2, more subjects were recruited to achieve greater generality. However, there seemed to be missing links between duration and stress. Acoustic analyses showed that stress and duration had no one-to-one correlation if final lengthening was taken into consideration. That is, stressed finals were not necessarily longer than unstressed finals. Similarly, longer finals were not necessarily judged as stressed syllables. One possible explanation might be that listeners were able to compensate for the final lengthening effect in their perception. Experiment 3 used reiterant speech to control for intrinsic durational differences of segments. Without this cue, stress could still be indentified reliably in the utterances. The conclusion was that duration alone is sufficient in stress detection. However, one could not say that the role of F0 is not important. All factors, including segmental and prosodic ones, act aggregately to make prominence. No single factor along any prosodic dimension is an exclusive cue to stress.
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