Prosodic Realization of Focus in Bilingual Production of Southern Min and Mandarin

Abstract

Previously post-focus compression (PFC) - the lowering of fundamental frequency (F0) and intensity of post-focal words to below those of the same words in identical sentences with neutral focus - was found in Beijing Mandarin but not in Taiwan Southern Min and Taiwan Mandarin. This study investigated whether the presence of PFC would vary with age and language use of societal bilinguals of Southern Min and Mandarin. Three groups of bilingual speakers of Quanzhou Southern Min and Mandarin, age around 20, 40 and 60, were examined for their prosodic realization of focus. All the speakers acquired Southern Min first, followed by Mandarin in childhood, but the younger speakers used more Mandarin than the older speakers. Comparisons of duration, intensity and F0 in focused, prefocus and post-focus words indicated that all groups produced Taiwan-like focus, i.e., without PFC, in Southern Min, but the youngest group produced Beijing-like PFC in Mandarin. These findings reveal that increased language experience, such as greater amount of second language (L2) use, correlates with increased ability to produce native-like PFC in L2, suggesting that PFC can be used as an indicator in assessing L2 speech acquisition.

Prosodic focus marking in Bai-Mandarin sequential bilinguals’ Mandarin

“…Secondly, our results are consistent with the previous results from Min-Mandarin bilinguals [12] in that sequential bilinguals successfully acquire the use of prosodic cues for encoding focus. The native-like production of prosodic focus marking in the younger group of Min-Mandarin bilinguals Mandarin was suggested as results of more Beijing-like inputs and intensive training of Standard Mandarin.…”

“…late bilinguals) and bilinguals who acquire two languages in early childhood (sequential bilinguals) has received considerable attention ( [9,10,11,12]). It has been found that the similarity between the learners' L1 and L2 did not necessarily lead to the attainment of native-like prosodic focus marking in late bilinguals in L2.…”

“…However, they consistently lengthened the duration of the focal constituents in both languages. [12] examined the prosodic focus marking produced by Min-Mandarin sequential bilinguals from different age groups in their Min and Mandarin. These speakers spoke Quanzhou Southern Min as their L1 and acquired Mandarin as L2 in mainland China.…”

“…It was found that younger bilinguals could produce BeijingMandarin-like prosodic focus marking, but older bilinguals could not. [12] suggested that more Beijing-Mandarin-like input and intensive training of Putonghua (Standard Mandarin) could explain the monolingual-like production by younger bilinguals.…”

Native and non-native speaker processing and production of contrastive focus prosody

“…However, previous studies have reported differences between the production of focus prosody by native English and L2 English Mandarin speakers (Chen et al 2014, Chen 2015, Kao et al 2016, Wu & Chung 2011. For example, in a study of Mandarin and English speakers' production of corrective focus in English by Kao et al (2016), both English speakers and Mandarin speakers exhibited in-focus expansion and post-focus compression, although the Mandarin speakers differed from the English speakers in the alignment of their F0 peak and the magnitude of their intensity drop, showing a later F0 peak than that of native English speakers and a smaller intensity drop between the stressed syllable of the focused word and the following syllable.…”