Prosodic realization of tonal target and F0 peak alignment in Mandarin neutral tone

Neutral tone in Mandarin is generally believed to lack tonal identity and exhibit more variability in its phonetic realization. We examined the tonal target of neutral tone in a prosodic word consisting of a full syllable (S) and one, two, or three neutral-tone syllables. In the experiment, the test words, presented in isolation and embedded in a carrier sentence, were read in two intonation patterns: declarative and interrogative. The results showed: (1) the tonal target of neutral tone is L(ow) at the end of the intonation phrase in declarative intonation and M(id) in question intonation; (2) its phonetic realization is influenced by intonation patterns, the tone of S and the number of neutral-tone syllables in the prosodic word; (3) the influence of the tone of S is more robust in shorter sequences than in longer ones with three neutral-tone syllables; (4) placement of the F0 peak in T2 (LH) and the neutral tone immediately following T3 (L) is susceptible to the number of neutral-tone syllables. It seems clear from our study that while the tonal target of neutral tone is related to prosodic structure, its actual F0 scaling is sensitive to prosodic manipulations such as intonation patterns and prosodic word length. In addition, tonelessness of neutral tone allows for more freedom in the alignment of the F0 peak, whose temporal coordination with its segmental host is, nevertheless, subject to both phonological and phonetic constraints.

‘Wh’-question intonation in Standard Colloquial Bengali

Mycock, Xu, and Lahiri provide LFG analyses of multiple multi-clause constituent ‘wh’- question intonation patterns in Standard Colloquial Bengali (the Bengali dialect spoken in Kolkata), capturing the intonational tune–text mapping which crucially interacts with syntax, pragmatics, and semantics. Based on a new set of data, they identify the intonational contours used with ‘wh’-questions that include multiple question words and/or that comprise multiple clauses. These data reveal that a Focus accent can be ‘shared’ across a sequence of question words and that a subordinate clause forms a separate intonational unit (an Intonational Phrase) when it contains question words that take scope over a higher clause but not when they only take scope over the clause in which they appear.

Perception and Production of Statement-Question Intonation in Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Developmental Investigation

Prosody or “melody in speech” in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is often perceived as atypical. This study examined perception and production of statements and questions in 84 children, adolescents and adults with and without ASD, as well as participants’ pitch direction discrimination thresholds. The results suggested that the abilities to discriminate (in both speech and music conditions), identify, and imitate statement-question intonation were intact in individuals with ASD across age cohorts. Sensitivity to pitch direction predicted performance on intonation processing in both groups, who also exhibited similar developmental changes. These findings provide evidence for shared mechanisms in pitch processing between speech and music, as well as associations between low- and high-level pitch processing and between perception and production of pitch.

Context Matters for Tone and Intonation Processing in Mandarin

In tonal languages such as Mandarin, both lexical tone and sentence intonation are primarily signaled by F0. Their F0 encodings are sometimes in conflict and sometimes in congruency. The present study investigated how tone and intonation, with F0 encodings in conflict or in congruency, are processed and how semantic context may affect their processing. To this end, tone and intonation identification experiments were conducted in both semantically neutral and constraining contexts. Results showed that the overall performance of tone identification was better than that of intonation. Specifically, tone identification was seldom affected by intonation information irrespective of semantic contexts. However, intonation identification, particularly question intonation, was susceptible to the final lexical tone identity and affected by the semantic context. In the semantically neutral context, questions ending with a rising tone and a falling tone were equally difficult to identify. In the semantically constraining context, questions ending with a falling tone were much better identified than those ending with a rising tone. This perceptual asymmetry suggests that top-down information provided by the semantically constraining context can play a facilitating role for listeners to disentangle intonational information from tonal information, but mainly in sentences with the lexical falling tone in the final position.

Information-Seeking Question Intonation in Basque Spanish and Its Correlation with Degree of Contact and Language Attitudes

The present study analyzes the prosodic characteristics of the variety of Spanish in contact with Basque (in the Basque Country, Spain). We focus on information-seeking yes/no questions, which present different intonation contours in Spanish and Basque. In Castilian Spanish, these sentences end in a rising contour, whereas in Basque, they end in a falling or rising–falling circumflex contour. In our previous work, this topic was investigated among the urban populations of Bilbao and San Sebastian. The results were that 79% of information-seeking yes/no questions had final falling intonational configurations. All the speakers presented a substantial presence of final falls regardless of their linguistic profile, but there were differences among speakers in the degree of presence of such features. A correlation was observed between the dependent variable of ‘frequency of occurrence of final falls in absolute interrogatives’ and social factors, such as ‘degree of contact with Basque’ and ‘attitudes towards Basque and the Basque ethnolinguistic group’. The correlation was that the higher the degree of contact with Basque and the more positive the attitudes towards Basque and the Basque ethnolinguistic group, the greater the frequency of occurrence of final falling intonational contours in information-seeking absolute interrogatives. The interpretation of this correlation was that the adoption of the characteristic Basque prosody allows speakers to be recognized as members of the Basque community. In the present study, we focused on rural areas. Falling intonational contours at the end of information-seeking absolute interrogatives were even more common than in urban areas (93.4%), and no correlation was found with degree of contact with Basque and with attitudes towards Basque. Our interpretation is that in rural areas the presence of Basque in daily life is stronger, and that there is a consolidated variety of Spanish used by all speakers regardless of their attitudes. Thus, the adoption of intonating features of this language is not the only indicator belonging to the Basque ethnolinguistic group. Our study reveals the great relevance of subjective social factors, such as language attitudes, in the degree of convergence between two languages.

Linguistic Characteristics of Narrative Text Written by Male and Female Students

Language is a reflection of speakers. A person can guess the identity such as the origin, character, or behavior of the interlocutor of the language he uses. Gender affect the use of language, both oral and written language. As an essential skill in learning English, writing involves the application of grammar and sentence pattern, vocabulary, or diction and cross cultural understanding. It can be said that writing ability is someone capability to express their idea in the form of written representation. The objective of this study is to investigate the linguistic form of narrative text written by male and female students. The data of this study will be gathered by sentences in narrative text written by male and female students of Senior High School about their experience. The use of language features proposed empty adjectives, hedge, intensifier, hypercorrect grammar super polite form, tag question and emphatic stress, even though the characteristics of color words and question intonation have not been found in the characters’ utterances. Keywords: Linguistic Characteristics, Gender, Writing, Narrative Text

Categorical perception of lexical tone contrasts and gradient perception of the statement–question intonation contrast in Zhumadian Mandarin

ABSTRACTWe intended to establish if two lexical tone contrasts in Zhumadian Mandarin, one between early and late aligned falls and another between early and late aligned rises, are perceived categorically, while the difference between declarative and interrogative pronunciations of these four tones is perceived gradiently. Presenting stimuli from 7-point acoustic continua between tones and between intonations, we used an identification task and a discrimination task with an experimental group of native listeners and a control group of Indonesian listeners, whose language employs none of the differences within either the falling or the rising pitch contours in its phonology. Only the lexical condition as perceived by the experimental group yielded sigmoid identification functions and a heightened discriminatory sensitivity around the midpoint of continua. The intonational condition in the native group and both conditions in the control group yielded gradient identification functions and smaller, reverse effects of the continuum midpoints in the discrimination task. The results are interpreted to mean that sentence modality contrasts can be expressed gradiently, but that lexical tone differences are represented phonologically, and hence are perceived categorically, despite low phonetic salience of the contrast. This conclusion challenges assumptions about the relation between linguistic functions and linguistic structures.