Post-focus Compression Research Articles

Investigating post-focus compression in code-switching: A comparative study of Twain Mandarin and English

On-focus pitch range expansion is a documented phenomenon in both English and Mandarin Chinese. However, the presence of post-focus compression (PFC) contrasts with its absence in Taiwan Mandarin, a regional variant of Mandarin Chinese. This discrepancy becomes particularly intriguing in the context of code-switching, which provides a unique lens to observe the interplay between these two languages. This study probes the manifestation and cognitive processing of PFC in code-switching constructs, employing a bilingual paradigm between English and Taiwan Mandarin. Through a carefully designed production experiment, this research addresses two questions: (a) Is PFC evidence in the code-switching utterances of simultaneous and early bilinguals? (b) Is there an observable correlation between the emergence of PRC in linguistic output and the language proficiency of late bilinguals, potentially indicating a transfer effect from Taiwan Mandarin to English? Anticipated results may substantiate the presence of linguistic transfer in the code-switching sentences of bilingual individuals of diverse English proficiencies. Furthermore, the implications of these findings may extend to pedagogical strategies, offering insights into the deployment of code-switching within multilingual educational settings.

English Prosodic Focus Marking by Cantonese Trilingual Children With and Without Autism Spectrum Disorder.

The current study investigated English prosodic focus marking by autistic and typically developing (TD) Cantonese trilingual children, and examined the potential differences in this regard compared to native English-speaking children. Forty-eight participants were recruited with 16 speakers for each of the three groups (Cantonese-speaking autistic [CASD], Cantonese-speaking TD [CTD], and English-speaking TD [ETD] children), and prompt questions were designed to elicit desired focus type (i.e., broad, narrow, and contrastive focus). Mean duration, mean fundamental frequency (F0), F0 range, mean intensity, and F0 curves were used as the acoustic correlates for linear mixed-effects model fitting and functional data analyses in relation to groups and focus conditions (i.e., broad, narrow, and contrastive pre-, on-, and post-focus). The CTD group had post-focus compression (PFC) patterns via reducing mean duration, narrowing F0 range, and lowering mean F0, F0 curve, and mean intensity for words under both narrow and contrastive post-focus conditions, while the CASD group only had shortened mean duration and lowered F0 curves. However, neither the CTD group nor CASD group showed much of on-focus expansion (OFE) patterns. The ETD group marked OFE by increasing mean duration, mean F0, mean intensity, and higher F0 curve for words under on-focus conditions. The CTD group utilized more acoustic cues than the CASD group when it comes to PFC. The ETD group differed from the CASD and CTD groups in the use of OFE. Furthermore, both the CASD and CTD groups showed positive first language transfer in the use of duration and intensity and, potentially, successful acquisition in the use of F0 for prosodic focus marking. Meanwhile, the differences in the use of OFE between the Cantonese-speaking and English-speaking groups, not PFC, might indicate that Cantonese-speaking children acquire PFC prior to OFE.

Prosodic realization of identification and contrastive focus in Korean multiple accusative constructions

This study investigated how two different kinds of prominence-induced prosodic strengthening, identificational focus and contrastive focus, are phonetically realized in Seoul Korean. In the experiment, 16 native speakers produced target sentences presented in three different prosodic conditions: default reading, NP1-contrast, and NP2-contrast. The production data presented three crucial characteristics in the phonetic manifestations of prominence-induced prosodic strengthening in Seoul Korean. First, identificational focus gave rise to temporal expansion and pitch enhancement over the constructions under the focus. Second, contrastive focus brought about modification of temporal, pitch, and prosodic structures as well as pre- and post-focus compression. Finally, the two different types of prominence marking interacted with each other; the prosodic realization of contrastive focus overrode the prosodic realization of identificational focus, which was in line with the formal (syntactic) distinction of the two types of focus. To conclude, the current study demonstrates the interplay of information structure and discourse contexts in prosodic strengthening effects induced by prominence, especially in Seoul Korean, which lacks lexical stress and pitch accent.

Declarative or declarative question?—On the acoustics of English prosody of Hong Kong trilingual children with autism spectrum disorder

The current study investigated the production of English prosody (i.e., focus marking) of trilingual Cantonese children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and their typically developing (TD) peers (i.e., Cantonese and American English children without ASD) using declarative questions. Speech materials were segmented at word and syllable levels, and word duration, f0, f0 range and intensity were extracted. Acoustic data were fitted using linear mixed-effects models with different explanatory variables followed by a likelihood ratio test. Between group comparison showed that the ASD group had significantly more fluctuating f0 range in post-focus words than the TD groups, which is likely to be an indication of hypercorrection, i.e., over-application of perceived prosodic pattern in English declarative questions. Within groups, the Cantonese children showed different patterns to the English children in terms of the interaction between the acoustic measures and on-focus expansion and post-focus compression. The Cantonese ASD group showed some degree of post-focus compression in terms of duration and mean f0, while the Cantonese TD group only had such pattern in terms of mean f0. The English TD group had a tendency of on-focus expansion in terms of duration and f0 range, but post-focus words showed significantly higher mean f0 than the pre- and on-focus ones, probably due to the question intonation.

Makkan Arabic does not have post-focus compression: a production and perception study.

Post-focus compression (PFC), in which words following focus are compressed in F 0 and intensity, is recently found to be effective in encoding focus. Recent studies find that PFC is present in Egyptian, Hijazi and Lebanese Arabic, and hence they are classified as +PFC languages. However, there are languages from the same family language which differ mainly in terms of the presence and absence of PFC. The current study investigated the production and perception of prosodic focus marking in Makkan Arabic, an under-researched Arabic dialect. Systematic acoustic analyses and statistical tests show that (a)the on-focus word is realized by expanding the excursion size, increasing the F 0 and strengthening the intensity of its stressed syllable, (b)information and contrastive focus are not prosodically distinguishable, (c) Makkan Arabic lacks PFC, and (d)focus recognition is low compared to Hijazi Arabic (+PFC), Taiwanese and Taiwan Mandarin (other-PFC languages). The new findings, taken together with recent findings, suggest that (1) the prosodic encoding of focus is different across Arabic dialects productively and perceptually, and (2) the on-focus raising is not a sufficient factor in recognizing prosodic cues to focus. These results contribute to broadening our understanding of different prosodic focus markings cross-linguistically and cross-dialectally.

Post-focus compression in Brahvi and Balochi.

Previous research has shown that post-focus compression (PFC)- the reduction of pitch range and intensity after a focused word in an utterance, is a robust means of marking focus, but it is present only in some languages. The presence of PFC appears to follow language family lines. The present study is a further exploration of the distribution of PFC by investigating Brahvi, a Dravidian language, and Balochi, an Indo-Iranian language. Balochi is predicted to show PFC given its presence in other Iranian languages. Dravidian languages have not been studied for prosodic focus before and they are not related to any languages with PFC. We recorded twenty native speakers from each language producing declarative sentences in different focus conditions. Acoustic analyses showed that,in both languages, post-focus f0 and other correlates were significantly reduced relative to baseline neutral-focus sentences, but post-focus lowering of f0, and intensity was greater in magnitude in Balochi than in Brahvi. The Balochi results confirm our prediction, while the Brahvi results offer the first evidence ofPFC in a Dravidian language. The finding of PFC in a Dravidian language is relevant to a postulated origin of PFC, which is related to the controversial Nostratic Macrofamily hypothesis.

Perception of post-focus compression as a cue to focus in L2 English

English and Mandarin both mark focus with post-focus compression (PFC) of F0 and intensity. Previous production research indicates PFC may be a universally marked feature difficult to transfer between languages, but the generally narrower pitch range and lack of fluency indicative of nonnative speech impede the ability to conclude the marked status of PFC based on production data alone. The present study utilized accuracy scores on a forced-choice prosodic restoration perception task to identify whether nonnative learners of a PFC language (English) with a native PFC language L1 (Mandarin) are capable of perceiving PFC as a cue to focus when no other focus cues are available. The role of L2 proficiency in the ability to use PFC as a cue to focus was also examined. Results indicate that native Mandarin listeners had significantly poorer accuracy compared to native English listeners at using PFC as a cue to focus in English regardless of proficiency, thus supporting PFC’s role as a marked feature not easily transferred into an L2, but some Mandarin listeners’ above chance performance on the task indicate it is not impossible to perceive PFC as a cue to focus in an L2 context.

Pitch Accent Distribution and Focus Structure in Taifi Arabic: A Production Study

Prosodic encoding of focus in Taifi Arabic is not yet fully understood. A recent production study found significant acoustic differences between syntactically identical sentences with information focus, contrastive focus and without focus. This paper presents results from a production experiment investigating whether information and contrastive focus have prosodic effects on the pitch-accent distributions. Using question-answer paradigms, 16 native speakers of Taifi Arabic were asked to read three target sentences in different focus conditions. Results reveal that every content word is pitch-accented in utterances with and without focus. However, there are very few cases (23.12%) in which the post-focus words are deaccented. The largest percentage of deaccentuation was observed in the utterances with initial contrastive focus. The results show that focus structures in Taifi Arabic show both deaccentuation and post-focus compression. Therefore, the prosodic realization of focus in Taifi Arabic is different from their counterparts in other Arabic dialects such as Egyptian and Lebanese Arabic. These findings have an important implication for both the prosodic typology and focus typology.

A study on the perception of prosodic cues to focus by Egyptian listeners: Some make use of them, but most of them don't

The role of prosody in the encoding of information structure in Egyptian Arabic is not yet fully understood. A recent production study found significant acoustic differences between morpho-syntactically identical utterances expressing a topic-comment and a focus-background structure. This paper presents the results from two perception experiments testing Egyptian Arabic listeners’ ability to infer the two pragmatically different structures from acoustically different prosodic realizations. In the first experiment, naturalistic stimuli were used while in the second experiment, the stimuli were gated after the first target word whose pitch contour was manipulated. In addition, the first experiment was repeated with German-speaking listeners to compare their performance to that of the Egyptian listeners. The results suggest that Egyptian listeners perform only slightly above chance-level in both conditions, while the German-speaking listeners were more successful (75% correct). We interpret the results as a difference in conventionalization of the mapping between prosodic form and pragmatic meaning. This difference may be due to the non-categorical character of post-focus compression and the strong variation within and across speakers in Egyptian Arabic. Thus, the results lend some support to the distinction between ‘deaccenting’ and ‘non-deaccenting’ languages in terms of the conventionalization of a prosodic structure.

Post-focus compression is not automatically transferred from Korean to L2 English*

Korean and English are both known to show on-focus pitch range expansion and post-focus pitch range compression (PFC). But it is not clear if this prosodic similarity would make it easy for Korean speakers to learn English focus prosody. In the present study, we conducted a production experiment using phone number strings to examine whether Korean learners of English produce a native-like focus prosody. Korean learners of English were classified into three groups (advanced, intermediate and low) according to their English proficiency and were compared to native speakers. Results show that intermediate and low groups of speakers did not increase duration, intensity, and pitch in the focus positions, nor did they compress those cues in the post-focus positions. Advanced speakers noticeably increased the acoustic cues in the focus positions to a similar extent as native speakers. However, their performance in post-focus positions was quite far from that of native speakers in terms of pitch and excursion size. These results thus demonstrate a lack of positive transfer of focus prosody from Korean to English in L2 learning, and learners may have to relearn it from scratch, which is consistent with a previous finding. More importantly, the results provide further support for the view proposed in other works that acoustic properties of PFC were not easily transferred from one language to another.

Prosodic encoding of focus in Hijazi Arabic

This paper presents findings of the first systematic acoustic analysis of focus prosody in Hijazi Arabic (HA), an under-researched Arabic dialect. A question-answer paradigm was used to elicit information and contrastive focus at different sentence locations in comparison with their neutral focus counterparts. Systematic acoustic analyses were performed to compare all the focus conditions, in terms of both continuous F0 trajectories and specific acoustic measurements. Results show that focused words have significantly expanded excursion size, higher maximum F0 and longer duration. Post-focus words have significantly lowered F0 (except in the case of penultimate focus). Pre-focus words, in contrast, lack systematic changes. These patterns are consistent with previously reported prosodic patterns of focus in other Arabic dialects. They are also consistent with a number of others languages that have also been applied similar systematic acoustic analyses. Thus Arabic appears to belong to a group of languages that all exhibit post-focus compression (PFC), as opposed to languages that lack PFC. In addition, the results also show evidence of prosodic differences between contrastive focus and information focus. This difference, however, is interpreted as due to a methodological feature that allowed elicitation of incredulity related to contrastive focus, rather than as a language-specific property. It is also argued that the possible involvement of incredulity in focus marking needs further research.

Interactive Prosodic Marking of Focus, Boundary and Newness in Mandarin

The current study investigates whether and how focus, phrase boundary and newness can be simultaneously marked in speech prosody in Mandarin Chinese. Homophones were used to construct three syntactic structures that differed only in boundary condition, focus was elicited by preceding questions, while newness of postboundary words was manipulated as whether they had occurred in the previous text. Systematic analysis of F0 and duration showed that (1) duration was a reliable correlate of boundary strength regardless of focus location, while involvement of F0 was only in terms of lowering of phrase-final F0 minima and raising of phrase-initial F0 minima at a relatively strong boundary, (2) postfocus compression (PFC) of F0 was applied across all boundaries, including those with long silent pauses (over 200 ms), and postfocus F0 was lowered to almost the same degree in all boundary conditions, and (3) newness of postfocus words had no systematic effect on F0 or duration. These results indicate that not only functionally focus is independent of prosodic structure and newness, but also phonetically its realization is separate from boundary marking. Focus is signaled mainly through pitch range adjustments, which can occur even across phrase breaks, whereas boundaries are mostly signaled by duration adjustments.

Post-focus compression: All or nothing?

Post-focus compression (PFC) has been claimed to be a “hard-to-evolve,” inherent prosodic feature that may have a single historical origin (Proto-Nostratic). This study explored the distribution of PFC in two sub-dialects of Malaysian Hokkien (Southern Min Chinese), i.e., Penang Hokkien (PH) and Melaka Hokkien (MH), using novel experimental designs and statistical techniques (SS ANOVA). Specifically, in addition to the conventional nasal onset-only contexts, stop and fricative onset-only contexts were taken into consideration. We analyzed F0 and duration of the constituents in question under three focus conditions (Initial vs. Medial vs. Final focus in the Subject-Verb-Object frame). The results are (a) the presence of PFC may be dependent on different segmental contexts: in MH, PFC is attested in the stop onset-only environments but absent elsewhere and (b) the absence of PFC “induces” Post-focus shortening in the nasal and fricative-only contexts in MH and in all data in PH. The findings suggest that PFC may not be an “inherent” feature because MH and PH are closely related sub-dialects and both have had language contact with the same language, Malay. Finally, global F0 raising is found for the first time in Final focus (Object) in both MH and PH.

Native listeners’ evaluation of natural and synthesized prosody in Mandarin of American learners

Compared to duration and intensity, F0 was found the most difficult acoustic parameter to acquire in L2 prosody, especially post-focus compression of F0 (Chen, 2016). This study examined three groups’ Mandarin production of prosodic focus: native Beijing speakers, early American learners and late American learners. PENTAtrainer2 (Xu & Prom-on, 2014), a data-driven system for prosody analysis and synthesis, was used to model and synthesize F0 contours based on speaker groups and layered annotations of communicative functions: lexical, sentential and focal. Native Mandarin speakers were recruited to identify focus status (neutral, initial, medial, or final focus) and rate the naturalness (1-5 scale) of original and synthesized speech. Results reveal that natural speech was recognized and rated better than synthesized speech, early learners’ speech better than late learners’ speech, focused sentences better than no-focus sentences, and initial focus and medial focus better than final focus. Tones of focused words interacted with focus status of the sentence and speaker group. Future work will involve pairwise shape comparisons, root-mean-square error, and Pearson’s correlation coefficient comparing between natural and synthesized F0 contours. [This work was supported by the National Science Foundation of China 61573187 and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities in China NJUSTWGY14001.]

On the Phonetics and Phonology of Focus marking in Boro

It is discussed widely in the literature on tone and intonation that both these phenomenon make use of changes in the f0. It is often assumed that intonation in tone languages is only slightly more limited than it is in non-tonal ones (Yip 2002). This paper addresses the question of tone assignment in Boro and investigates how it operates as a function of focus. This paper studies both the phonetics and phonology of intonation in Boro and delineates the way in-situ and morphological focus markers influence sentence prosody. The results show that in-situ focus does not result in any change of the f0 value of the target word. The only consistent acoustic correlate for focus marking is found to be post focus compression. The morphological focus marker leads to discrete downstepping of the following High tone and also emerges with an H* by deleting the neighboring H tones. One of the significant results of this experiment is that while H tones were realized at a higher f0 while co-occurring with the H* of the MF marker, L tones did not lead to any changes unless the stem were disyllabic, showing that there are phonological factors constraining sentential prosody.

The hierarchies of phonetic realization of focus in second language speech

Two experiments were conducted to examine the phonetic realization of focus in L2 Mandarin by L1 American English speakers and in L2 English by L1 Beijing Mandarin speakers. The production data in both experiments indicated an acoustical hierarchy of duration > intensity > F0 at the sentential level. This hierarchy was correlated with another hierarchy in sentence location relative to focus: pre-focus > in-focus > post-focus. In other words, L2 learners tended to produce more nativelike patterns of duration than intensity, and intensity than F0, to code focus. These patterns were more salient in pre-focus condition than in-focus condition, and in in-focus condition than post-focus condition. These findings are consistent with Wu and Chung (2011, ICPhS) and Chen, Xu and Guion-Anderson (2014, Phonetica) that bilingual learners used more duration and intensity than F0 and more in-focus expansion than post-focus compression to code focus in L2 speech. Post-focus compression of F0 was the most difficult acoustic cue in phonetically realizing L2 focus. The nativelikeness of focus realization in L2 speech increased with the increase of L2 experience. [This work was supported by the National Science Foundation of China #61573187 and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities in China NJUSTWGY14001.]

Prosodic Realization of Focus in Bilingual Production of Southern Min and Mandarin

Previously post-focus compression (PFC) - the lowering of fundamental frequency (F0) and intensity of post-focal words to below those of the same words in identical sentences with neutral focus - was found in Beijing Mandarin but not in Taiwan Southern Min and Taiwan Mandarin. This study investigated whether the presence of PFC would vary with age and language use of societal bilinguals of Southern Min and Mandarin. Three groups of bilingual speakers of Quanzhou Southern Min and Mandarin, age around 20, 40 and 60, were examined for their prosodic realization of focus. All the speakers acquired Southern Min first, followed by Mandarin in childhood, but the younger speakers used more Mandarin than the older speakers. Comparisons of duration, intensity and F0 in focused, prefocus and post-focus words indicated that all groups produced Taiwan-like focus, i.e., without PFC, in Southern Min, but the youngest group produced Beijing-like PFC in Mandarin. These findings reveal that increased language experience, such as greater amount of second language (L2) use, correlates with increased ability to produce native-like PFC in L2, suggesting that PFC can be used as an indicator in assessing L2 speech acquisition.

Prosodic realization of focus in American English by Beijing Mandarin learners

In addition to an increase of duration, F0 and intensity in phonetically realizing focus, post-focus compression (PFC) of F0 and intensity has been found in many languages, including American English and Beijing Mandarin. Recent studies found that PFC did not easily transfer from language to language (Wu and Chung, 2011); however, language experience impacted the realization of PFC (Chen et al., 2012). The effect of length of residence (LOR) in an L2-speaking environment on L2 pronunciation accuracy remains controversial (Piske, 2007). The current study examined English focus production of Beijing Mandarin learners, who were college freshmen, residing in the United States for 3 to 6 months, and college seniors for 3.5 to 4 years. Compared to the control group, both learner groups produced comparable patterns of duration change; the freshman group did not present significant PFC of F0 and intensity in either initial-focus or medial-focus condition; the senior group presented a native-like PFC in the initial-focus condition and an intermediate pattern of PFC among the three groups in the medial-focus condition. The preliminary results indicate that Beijing Mandarin learners with long LOR in the US produced more native-like prosodic focus in English than those with short LOR in the United States.

Prosodic realization of focus in Mandarin by advanced American learners of Chinese

Prosodic focus in Beijing Mandarin and American English involves language-specific patterns of expansion in duration, F0 and intensity on the focused item as well as post-focus compression (PFC) of F0 and intensity (Xu, 1999; Xu & Xu, 2005). The current study examined whether advanced American learners of Mandarin realize prosodic focus and PFC in the same way as native speakers. Ten native Beijing Mandarin speakers and ten non-Chinese American learners of Mandarin produced stimuli with four Mandarin tone types on focused constituents, and Tone 1 in pre-focus and post-focus constituents. Preliminary results indicated that the learners produced focus-related duration changes in a manner similar to native Mandarin speakers. However, learners did not show native-like patterns of in-focus changes in intensity on Tone 2, mean F0 on Tone 1, and F0 excursion on Tone 4. Furthermore, learners showed no PFC of F0 or intensity, consistent with the idea that PFC is not easily transferred from L1 to L2 (Wu & Chung, 2011). Future work will investigate prosodic focus in the Mandarin of Chinese-heritage American learners. The goal is to investigate whether earlier exposure to the language (via heritage) affects learners' ability to realize prosodic focus in a native-like manner.

Prosodic focus with and without post-focus compression: A typological divide within the same language family?

There is increasing evidence that many languages encode prosodic focus not only with phonetic variations in the focused component itself, but also with a reduction of pitch range and intensity of the post-focus components, a strategy known as post-focus compression (PFC). However, evidence is also emerging that in many other languages prosodic encoding of focus is markedly different, suggesting that PFC might be related to factors such as the presence of lexical tone, stress or the availability of morphosyntactic means of signaling focus. The current study investigated the production and perception of f ocus in Taiwanese, Taiwan Mandarin and Beijing Mandarin, three languages/dialects that are all tonal and that have similar morphosyntactic means for indicating focus. Results showed clear evidence of PFC in Beijing Mandarin but lack of it in Taiwanese and Taiwan Mandarin, suggesting that PFC is independent of the factors mentioned above. Most interestingly, Taiwan Mandarin seems to have lost PFC due to close contact with Taiwanese despite its effectiveness as demonstrated by the perceptual experiment. The new findings, taken together with other recent finding about prosodic focus, seem to suggest that PFC is a “hard-to-evolve” prosodic feature that may have a single historical origin. Thus there is a need for large scale experimental research to explore the crosslinguistic distribution of PFC, so as to broaden our understanding of not only prosodic typology, but also language contact, bilingualism and language evolution in general.