The perception of intonation questions and statements in Cantonese

In tone languages there are potential conflicts in the perception of lexical tone and intonation, as both depend mainly on the differences in fundamental frequency (F0) patterns. The present study investigated the acoustic cues associated with the perception of sentences as questions or statements in Cantonese, as a function of the lexical tone in sentence final position. Cantonese listeners performed intonation identification tasks involving complete sentences, isolated final syllables, and sentences without the final syllable (carriers). Sensitivity (d′ scores) were similar for complete sentences and final syllables but were significantly lower for carriers. Sensitivity was also affected by tone identity. These findings show that the perception of questions and statements relies primarily on the F0 characteristics of the final syllables (local F0 cues). A measure of response bias (c) provided evidence for a general bias toward the perception of statements. Logistic regression analyses showed that utterances were accurately classified as questions or statements by using average F0 and F0 interval. Average F0 of carriers (global F0 cue) was also found to be a reliable secondary cue. These findings suggest that the use of F0 cues for the perception of intonation question in tonal languages is likely to be language-specific. © 2011 Acoustical Society of America.published_or_final_versio

Effect of intonation on Cantonese lexical tones

In tonal languages, there are potential conflicts between the F0-based changes due to the coexistence of intonation and lexical tones. In the present study, the interaction of tone and intonation in Cantonese was examined using acoustic and perceptual analyses. The acoustic patterns of tones at the initial, medial, and final positions of questions and statements were measured. Results showed that intonation affects both the F0 level and contour, while the duration of the six tones varied as a function of positions within intonation contexts. All six tones at the final position of questions showed rising F0 contour, regardless of their canonical form. Listeners were overall more accurate in the identification of tones presented within the original carrier than of the same tones in isolation. However, a large proportion of tones 33, 21, 23, and 22 at the final position of questions were misperceived as tone 25 both within the original carrier and as isolated words. These results suggest that although the intonation context provided cues for correct tone identification, the intonation-induced changes in F0 contour cannot always be perceptually compensated for, resulting in some erroneous perception of the identity of Cantonese tone. © 2006 Acoustical Society of America.published_or_final_versio

Intonation in Cantonese.

This thesis develops a system for describing intonation in Cantonese, a language having six phonological tones employing both pitch and slope. It analyses the utterance intonation contour into major intonation units, intonation units and feet. It defines what criteria those units meet and how they relate to each other. The intonation contours, constructed with a string of lexical tones, are described in terms of prosodic units which separate themselves in terms of pitch height and pitch span. The demarcation of the units is an innovation of the thesis. The different F0 values of identical phonological tones in an utterance are found to be in gradual descent if they are within an intonation group, and an intonation group is depicted more clearly when the two fitted lines which cover the top and the bottom are parallel and declined. A major intonation group is the largest prosodic unit in utterances. It is decided by a larger size of resetting of pitch span. An intonation group and a major intonation group each represent a unit of information which is semantically and syntactically coherent. The most prominent syllable in an intonation group is the tonic. An acoustic analysis of all possible combinations of the lexical tones of disyllabic and trisyllabic tonal sequences shows that tonal coarticulation is an important factor in modifying the F0 contours. The modification can affect both the pitch height and the slope of the F0 contours, and is also realised in both anticipatory and carryover effects. Prominence is examined, both at the level of words and of utterances, and a description of its prosodic parameters is developed with supporting evidence from the discussion of tonics

From communicative functions to prosodic forms

This is a proposal in favour of proceeding from communicative function to linguistic form, rather than the reverse, for an insightful account of how humans communicate by speech in languages. A functional framework is developed that encompasses argumentation structures, declarative and interrogative functions, and expressive intensification. Such a function orientation can become a powerful tool in comparative prosodic research across the world's languages. The potential of this approach is shown by comparing the prosodic form of Mandarin Chinese data collected in functionally contextualized scenarios with corresponding data from English and German

Cantonese Prosody: Sentence-final Particles and Prosodic Focus

Fundamental frequency (F0) is the most important feature among the components of prosody in a language, tone and intonation languages alike. In a tone language, how lexical tone and sentence intonation can both use F0 as their main acoustic cues has long been an intriguing question. Will the lexical tones be so resistant to modification that no elaborate intonation is possible in the language? How much of the surface sentential F0 is attributable to lexical tones and intonation? If F0 modification is kept minimal, how will prosodic focus be realized? And will the lack of focus-related F0 change be a disadvantage in terms of focus perception? In this dissertation, experimental studies have been made on Cantonese in some less well-understood aspects of its prosody. Firstly, the tonal characteristics of sentence-final particles (SFPs) in Cantonese as a special case of the interaction between tone and intonation are examined. Secondly, the acoustic correlates of prosodic focus in Cantonese are explored. SFPs are a class of words known to have functions similar to intonation. It is not yet clear, however, whether the F0 contours of SFPs are derived purely from lexical tones, purely intonational, or a combination of tone and intonation. As an attempt to offer a solution, a production experiment was designed in which sentences in Hong Kong Cantonese with ten different SFPs were recorded and detailed analyses of their F0 contours, final F0, final F0 velocity and duration were performed. The results show that most of these SFPs are very similar to the lexical tones in terms of F0 contours, but there are significant differences in durations in more than half the cases. In addition, the occurrence of an SFP does not give rise to differences in F0 and duration in the syllables preceding the SFP in most cases. But differences can be seen in sentences with question SFPs, which indicates that the prosody of the SFPs may be partly due to intonational meanings. One of the SFPs, however, exhibits a component F0 contour that seems to be sequentially attached to the end of the lexical tonal component. These findings suggest that Cantonese SFPs have underlying tonal targets just like those of lexical tones, but they also carry intonational meanings by modifying the lexical tonal contours. Previous research has shown that Beijing Mandarin, a tone language, marks focus not only by on-focus prosodic expansion like many other languages, but also by post-focus compression of pitch range and intensity (PFC). However, recently it is found that PFC is absent in Taiwanese and Taiwan Mandarin, two languages closely related to Beijing Mandarin. This finding both highlights the non-universality of PFC and raises questions about its origin. The present study explores these issues by investigating focus production in Cantonese by native Cantonese speakers born and raised in Hong Kong, and in English and Cantonese by bilingual speakers who were born and raised in Southern England. Results from the Hong Kong speakers show that, just as in Taiwanese and Taiwan Mandarin, PFC is absent in Cantonese, and mean F0, duration, intensity and excursion size were found to be higher in on-focus words. Results from the bilingual speakers show that their Cantonese also lacks PFC. More remarkably, out of the fifteen bilinguals tested, only one-third show PFC in all their English test sentences. These findings suggest that PFC is hard to transmit across languages through bilingualism. Moreover, the differential prosodic patterns among the bilingual speakers suggest that in the bilingual community, PFC may be subject to gradual loss. Although tone-intonation relationship in SFPs and the acoustic correlates have previously been studied, most of the discussion lacked supporting evidence from phonetic experiments. The present study is distinguished in its systematic experimental design and detailed acoustic analyses, and it is hoped that the results will lay the foundations for future investigations into Cantonese phonetics

Tonal placement in Tashlhiyt: How an intonation system accommodates to adverse phonological environments

In most languages, words contain vowels, elements of high intensity with rich harmonic structure, enabling the  perceptual retrieval of pitch. By contrast, in Tashlhiyt, a Berber language, words can be composed entirely of voiceless segments. When an utterance consists of such words, the phonetic opportunity for the execution of intonational pitch movements is exceptionally limited. This book explores in a series of production and perception experiments how these typologically rare phonotactic patterns interact with intonational aspects of linguistic structure. It turns out that Tashlhiyt allows for a tremendously flexible placement of tonal events. Observed intonational structures can be conceived of as different solutions to a functional dilemma: The requirement to realise meaningful pitch movements in certain positions and the extent to which segments lend themselves to a clear manifestation of these pitch movements

Tonal placement in Tashlhiyt: How an intonation system accommodates to adverse phonological environments

In most languages, words contain vowels, elements of high intensity with rich harmonic structure, enabling the  perceptual retrieval of pitch. By contrast, in Tashlhiyt, a Berber language, words can be composed entirely of voiceless segments. When an utterance consists of such words, the phonetic opportunity for the execution of intonational pitch movements is exceptionally limited. This book explores in a series of production and perception experiments how these typologically rare phonotactic patterns interact with intonational aspects of linguistic structure. It turns out that Tashlhiyt allows for a tremendously flexible placement of tonal events. Observed intonational structures can be conceived of as different solutions to a functional dilemma: The requirement to realise meaningful pitch movements in certain positions and the extent to which segments lend themselves to a clear manifestation of these pitch movements

Tonal placement in Tashlhiyt: How an intonation system accommodates to adverse phonological environments

In most languages, words contain vowels, elements of high intensity with rich harmonic structure, enabling the  perceptual retrieval of pitch. By contrast, in Tashlhiyt, a Berber language, words can be composed entirely of voiceless segments. When an utterance consists of such words, the phonetic opportunity for the execution of intonational pitch movements is exceptionally limited. This book explores in a series of production and perception experiments how these typologically rare phonotactic patterns interact with intonational aspects of linguistic structure. It turns out that Tashlhiyt allows for a tremendously flexible placement of tonal events. Observed intonational structures can be conceived of as different solutions to a functional dilemma: The requirement to realise meaningful pitch movements in certain positions and the extent to which segments lend themselves to a clear manifestation of these pitch movements