An Acoustic Study on The Effects Intonation Imposes on Sentence-final Particles in Nanjing Dialect

Abstract

To investigate the interaction between tone and intonation on the production of the sentence-final syllables and the effects of a specific type of characters, i.e. sentence-final particles (SFPs) in Nanjing dialect, acoustic analyses were carried out in the current study. Participants were asked to produce sentences under four conditions: (1) SFPs in interrogative sentences; (2) SFPs in declarative sentences; (3) homophones of the SFPs in interrogative sentences; (4) homophones of the SFPs in declarative sentences. The acoustic productions were analyzed in order to compare the same SFPs in different intonation patterns, i.e., interrogatives and declaratives, and SFPs and their homophones in the carrier sentences. Results showed that the influence of intonation on tones within sentence-final syllables indeed exists, but SFPs mitigate the extent to which intonation functions. These results suggest that intonation is present in tonal languages as well, whereas SFPs influence the realization of intonation by reducing the extent of global rising.