Production and perception of focus in PFC and non-PFC Languages: Comparing Beijing Mandarin and Hainan Tsat

Bei Wang*, Chenxia Li, Qian Wu, Xiaxia Zhang, Baofeng Wang*, Yi Xu

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

3 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Prosodic marking of foeus has been found to be typologieally different in terms of existence of post-focus compression in FO and intensity (PFC). In the current production experiments, we found that PFC showed in Mandarin, but not in Tsat (a language spoken in Hainan, China) or in Tsat-Mandarin (Mandarin spoken by Tsat people). The perception experiments further showed that focus perception in Tsat-Mandarin and Tsat was relatively low (about 30%). An interesting finding was that the perception of focus in Mandarin by Tsat listeners was much lower than that by Mandarin listeners (54.8% vs. 75.6%). In other words, it revealed the difficulty of speakers from a non-PFC language associating PFC with focus perception. It could partly explain why PFC is hard to be passed through language contact.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication13th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association 2012, INTERSPEECH 2012
Pages662-665
Number of pages4
Publication statusPublished - 2012
Externally publishedYes
Event13th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association 2012, INTERSPEECH 2012 - Portland, OR, United States
Duration: 9 Sept 201213 Sept 2012

Publication series

Name13th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association 2012, INTERSPEECH 2012
Volume1

Conference

Conference13th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association 2012, INTERSPEECH 2012
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityPortland, OR
Period9/09/1213/09/12

Keywords

  • Focus
  • Language contact
  • Post-focus compression (PFC)

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