Emphasis and tonal implementation in Standard Chinese

Abstract

Despite the greatly improved understanding of tonal articulation in Standard Chinese, no consensus has been reached on the most appropriate model of tonal implementation [Xu, Y., & Wang, Q. (2001). Pitch targets and their realization: Evidence from Mandarin Chinese. Speech Communication, 33, 319–337; Kochanski, G., & Shih, C. (2003). Prosody modeling with soft templates. Speech Communication, 39(3/4), 311–352]. To shed new light on the issue, all four lexical tones, embedded in sentences with different preceding and following tonal contexts, were elicited under corrective focus, with two degrees of emphasis (Emphasis and MoreEmphasis), in addition to a NoEmphasis base-line condition, so as to bring systematic variation in duration and F 0 to bear on the issue of tonal realization in different pragmatic contexts. Results showed comparable increases in syllable duration from the NoEmphasis condition to the Emphasis condition and from the latter to the MoreEmphasis condition. F 0 range expansion, however, was non-gradual: while there was a substantial increase in the F 0 range from the NoEmphasis to the Emphasis condition, the expansion from the Emphasis to the MoreEmphasis condition was marginal. Analyses of the F 0 patterns revealed that under emphasis, lexical tones were realized with magnified F 0 contours which were adapted to both the neighbouring tones and the durational increase of the tone-bearing syllables, and therefore maximally distinguishable from each other. Implications of these findings on models of tone and focus realization are discussed.