Cross-language data on five types of prosodic focus

Abstract

To examine the relative roles of language-specific and language-universal mechanisms in the production of prosodic focus, we compared production of five different types of focus by native speakers of English and Mandarin. Two comparable dialogues were constructed for each language, with the same words appearing in focused and unfocused position; 48 speakers recorded two dialogues each in their respective native language. Duration, F 0 (mean, maximum, range), and rmsintensity (mean, maximum) of all critical word tokens were measured. Across the different types of focus, cross-language differences were observed in the degree to which English versus Mandarin speakers use the different prosodic parameters to mark focus, suggesting that while prosody may be universally available for expressing focus, the means of its employment may be considerably language-specific.

Intonation Facilitates Prediction of Focus Even in the Presence of Lexical Tones

“…This acoustic finding is noteworthy in light of a recent production study [8] from our laboratory, where a greater degree of F 0 range expansion production of focused words was found for Mandarin speakers compared to English speakers. Given that salience is fundamentally gradient [22], it could be the case that Mandarin speakers start to expand their pitch range quite early in the utterance, in preparation for pitch range exaggeration on the focused word.…”

“…As demonstrated in previous production studies [8,19,21], prosody can be used for producing focused words in Mandarin in ways that do not interfere with tonal identity (e.g., by exaggeration of pitch register). However, what is interesting here is the perceptual reflection of this dual role for F 0 : Mandarin listeners could make use of the preceding intonation Target: [p h ] mei2 joʊ3 ɻən2 tsaɪ4 ʈʂʊŋ1 kɔ3 nəŋ2 ɕiɑŋ1 ɕin4 pʰu2 tʌ0 nəŋ2 ʈʂz 4 tsɑʊ4 ɕjɛn2 ʂweɪ3…”

“…For instance, cross-language experiments comparing English, French, and German found language-specific strategies where only German speakers use duration to enhance new information [7]. Even in languages where prosodic focus is produced in the same way, cross-language variation could nonetheless exist in the degree to which speakers use the different prosodic cues [8]. At the same time, how salience is achieved by means of prosody can also depend on the particular morpho-syntactic structure of the language, as in Wolof [9], where morphological markers are available, so that speakers do not redundantly use intonation, or in Italian [10], where focus contrasts can instead be expressed by word order, such that pitch accents provide less contextual information [11].…”

Exploring the Complexity of the L2 Intonation System: An Acoustic and Eye-Tracking Study

“…It is frequently used to signal given vs. new (Pierrehumbert and Hirschberg, 1990) and contrast (Liu, 2020). It is also commonly used to make corrections (Ip and Cutler, 2016) or help listeners to anticipate what the speaker is going to say (Levis and Levis, 2018).…”

“…They further concluded that Mandarin uses sentence stress to indicate discourse-level information and make contrasts. Analyzing five types of focus in Mandarin and English, Ip and Cutler (2016) found that Mandarin speakers showed greater increase in pitch range and pitch level for new-information focus.…”