2011/03/09

Gårding, E. (1987). Speech act and tonal pattern in Standard Chinese: Constancy and variation. Phonetica, 44, 13–29.

Presentation: Hsiao-chien

Summary: Sarah

This study intends to examine whether the intonation model proposed by the author for other languages also apply to a tone language such as Mandarin Chinese. Her model is composed of three essential elements, including turning points, pivots, and grids, all of which have distinctive functions. In particular, turning points are local F₀ fluctuations that signal word boundaries; pivots refer to drastic changes of F₀ direction, which correspond to syntactic boundaries; grids, delimited by pitch ceilings and pitch floors, serve the function of indicating different types of speech act. To testify the realizations of these three intonational parameters, a production experiment was conducted. Materials were four sentences with subject-predicate syntactic structures. Four native Mandarin speakers were recruited and asked to read each sentence in five speech act conditions (statement, yes/no question, statement after focus, statement with left focus, statement with right focus). There were three repetitions for each stimulus sentence. F₀ patterns were tracked and compared across different speakers and conditions. Results showed that the four speakers realized tonal patterns similarly. That is, turning points were all anchored to segmental boundaries, and pivots all corresponded to syntactic boundaries. In addition, grids of different speech acts were also much alike across speakers, irrespective of the fact that grid width (pitch range) varied from speaker to speaker. As the results fit the model well, the author thus concluded that her model was applicable to the description of Mandarin intonation structures.