Prosodic Organization and Focus Realization in Taiwan Mandarin

Prosodic Organization and Focus Realization in Taiwan Mandarin Yu-Yin Hsu James S. German Hong Kong Polytechnic University Aix Marseille Université, CNRS, LPL Hung Hom, Hong Kong Aix-en-Provence, France yyhsu@polyu.edu.hk james.german@lpl-aix.fr Abstract Cross-linguistically, the way that focus is marked through prosody can depend on a variety of factors, including local constraints on prosodic organization or the position of a word within the larger focus constituent. Here we report on a production study that explores the possible influence of prosodic organization and position on focus realization in Taiwan Mandarin. The materials consisted of sentences in which the syntactic subject consisted of a monosyllabic numeral, classifier, and noun. The context was manipulated to elicit narrow information focus (i.e., using wh-questions) on either the numeral, the noun, or the entire NP. The resulting target syllables were then analyzed in terms of their F0 characteristics, duration, and amplitude. The results revealed clear asymmetries in how the numeral and noun were realized in their corresponding single- word narrow focus condition versus in the NP focus condition, though confiding to the intrinsic tone-patterns (e.g., Tone 1 versus Tone 3 words showed different contours). Moreover, the classifier did not always conform to its expected status when external to the focus constituent. These results thus show that focus effects in Taiwan Mandarin cannot be explained in terms of single parameter acoustic enhancement on individual focused words, and they suggest that focus marking in that variety is conditioned by independent constraints on local prosodic structure. 1 Introduction Formally, focus concerns the way that a sentence is divided into pieces of information which relate to the discourse context in distinct ways (Krifka, 2007). While focus constituents larger than words are well-attested in many languages, existing research on the prosodic marking of focus in Chinese varieties has emphasized the relative phonetic prominence of a single word that constitutes either the subject or the object of a sentence (e.g., Jin, 1996; Xu, 1999; Chen & Gussenhoven, 2008; Chen, Wang, & Xu, 2008). It has been reported, for example, that narrow new- information focus is associated with prominence in individual acoustic parameters, including longer duration (Xu, 1999), higher mean F0 (Chen et al., 2008), or a larger F0 range (Xu, 1999; Chen & Gussenhoven, 2008). Conflicting findings have been reported regarding whether focus constituents have a higher mean intensity (Chen et al., 2009 vs. Jin, 1996). Very little is known, however, about how prosodic modification may apply to larger and more complex phrasal domains in varieties of Chinese (cf. Chen, 2010). While prosodic correlates of focus are well- studied for Beijing Mandarin, different patterns of focus realization have been reported for other varieties of a Chinese (see Xu, Chen, & Wang, 2012). For example, whether post-focal compression of pitch range applies to single simple nouns in a sentence may be different between Beijing Mandarin and Taiwan Mandarin (Chen et al., 2014), closely related Taiwan Min varieties (Chen et al., 2009), and between Melaka and Penang Min varieties (Huang & Hsieh, 2016). Unlike Mandarin and …

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