Effects of semantic focus on Taiwanese intonation in spontaneous and read speech

Abstract

Previous studies on prosodic effects of semantic focus indicated that sentences produced with narrow semantic focus had different intonation patterns from sentences produced with broad semantic focus. Theses effects include expansion of the pitch range for the focused words and compression of the pitch range for unfocused words in sentences produced with narrow focus. The present study examined the prosodic effects of semantic focus on the intonation patterns of Taiwanese by comparing pragmatically controlled spontaneous speech with read speech. Spontaneous speech was obtained from the dialogue between pairs of speakers participating in a game. The same speakers were asked to read scripts prepared from the original dialogues. Both the read and spontaneous versions were analyzed to show prosodic phrasing and global pitch shapes for different types of sentences. Sentences produced with a narrow focus in the spontaneous version were compared with their read counterparts produced with a broad focus for expansion and compression of pitch range and other tonal features.