Prosodic encoding of topic and focus and its influence on speech perception in split sentences of Chinese Putonghua

Bei Wang*, Caroline Féry

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

The present study is an investigation of the prosodic encoding of split noun sentences in Putonghua, for instance, `shu, wo mai le san ben (Book, I have bought three).' in which the split noun is to highlight the corresponding information. The question and answer paradigm was used to induce contexts where the split noun was either topic or focus of the sentence. The speech production results of 280 split sentences read by 7 speakers show that: (1) In the two conditions, the split noun itself does not differ in either F0 or duration, (2) Compared to the intonational contours of the focus context, those of the topic context have higher maximum F0 in the base parts and shorter silence after the split noun. The prosodic domain of topic is within itself, whereas that of focus is the whole sentence. The perception experiment shows that the difference of prosody between the two conditions is perceivable, as matched question and statement is preferred.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)694-700
Number of pages7
JournalShengxue Xuebao/Acta Acustica
Volume35
Issue number6
Publication statusPublished - Nov 2010
Externally publishedYes

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Prosodic encoding of topic and focus and its influence on speech perception in split sentences of Chinese Putonghua'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this