Tone sandhi, prosodic phrasing, and focus marking in Wenzhou Chinese

In most languages, focus (i.e. highlighting information) is marked by modifying the melody of the sentence. But how is focus marked in a Chinese dialect with eight different citation tones and a complex tonal phonology?This thesis investigates the connection between tonal realization and tone change (tone sandhi) in Wenzhou Chinese, and whether and how such a connection is conditioned by prosodic structure and focus marking. Experiments were conducted with young speakers of Wenzhou Chinese, whose speech was acoustically analyzed so as to investigate the application domain of tone sandhi and the influence of focus thereon, the tonal realization on the word and phrase level and its interaction with focus, the pre-planning of sentential pitch, as well as the realization of referents with different information statuses. The experimental findings suggest that the application, but not the implementation, of tone sandhi is independent of focus, and that focus and prosodic structure have similar but independent effects on the realization of lexical tones. It is also shown that pitch scaling is sensitive to syntactic structure and complexity, and that the marking of givenness, broad focus, and narrow focus leads to discrete levels along the same acoustic parameters. These findings are of interest to researchers working on lexical tone, prosodic structure, and how information structure categories such as focus affect tonal realization and prosodic phrasing.LEI Universiteit LeidenNWO VIDI grant 061084338 to dr. Y. ChenLanguage Use in Past and Presen

Proceedings 2016: Selected papers from the twentieth college-wide conference for students in languages, linguistics & literature

"Celebrating Voices - past • present • future": Selected papers from the annual college-wide conference for students in languages, linguistics & literature at the College of Languages, Linguistics & Literature, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (2016).Selected papers from the annual college-wide conference for students in languages, linguistics & literature at the College of Languages, Linguistics & Literature, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.Support for the conference was provided by the UH College of Language, Linguistics & Literature and the National Foreign Language Resource Cente

Information structure and the referential status of linguistic expression : workshop as part of the 23th annual meetings of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft in Leipzig, Leipzig, February 28 - March 2, 2001

This volume comprises papers that were given at the workshop Information Structure and the Referential Status of Linguistic Expressions, which we organized during the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft (DGfS) Conference in Leipzig in February 2001. At this workshop we discussed the connection between information structure and the referential interpretation of linguistic expressions, a topic mostly neglected in current linguistics research. One common aim of the papers is to find out to what extent the focus-background as well as the topic-comment structuring determine the referential interpretation of simple arguments like definite and indefinite NPs on the one hand and sentences on the other

Master of Arts

thesisThis thesis investigates the predicate cleft (PC) constructions in Mandarin Chinese. Cheng & Vicente conclude that the topicalized verb and the lower verb in bare PC form a long head movement relation, discarding a remnant movement analysis based on vP-external scrambling. However, to be complete, the argument also needs to consider vP-internal scrambling observed by Soh and a selective deletion analysis. I show that vP-internal scrambling cannot serve to derive a plausible remnant movement analysis; nor can a selective deletion analysis be accomplished. Long head movement is necessary to account for Mandarin bare PC. However, although this conclusion converges with cross-linguistic treatment of predicate clefts, I point out the unreliability of idiom interpretation as a diagnostic for long head movement used in several studies. Moreover, I present the puzzling restriction on the types of categories that can undergo pied-piping with the fronted verb. Last, I show that the verb doubling effect, an unresolved issue in Cheng & Vicente, can be accounted for, if the proposal on parallel chains is adopted. The necessity of a long head movement analysis supports bare phrase structure whereby head-to-spec movement is expected. In addition, it constitutes as an empirical argument against eliminating syntactic head movement. The compositionality of idiom interpretation and the restriction on full PC are worth further study

Syntax inside the grammar

This volume collects novel contributions to comparative generative linguistics that “rethink” existing approaches to an extensive range of phenomena, domains, and architectural questions in linguistic theory. At the heart of the contributions is the tension between descriptive and explanatory adequacy which has long animated generative linguistics and which continues to grow thanks to the increasing amount and diversity of data available to us. The chapters address research questions on the relation of syntax to other aspects of grammar and linguistics more generally, including studies on language acquisition, variation and change, and syntactic interfaces. Many of these contributions show the influence of research by Ian Roberts and collaborators and give the reader a sense of the lively nature of current discussion of topics in synchronic and diachronic comparative syntax ranging from the core verbal domain to higher, propositional domains

Syntactic architecture and its consequences I

This volume collects novel contributions to comparative generative linguistics that “rethink” existing approaches to an extensive range of phenomena, domains, and architectural questions in linguistic theory. At the heart of the contributions is the tension between descriptive and explanatory adequacy which has long animated generative linguistics and which continues to grow thanks to the increasing amount and diversity of data available to us. The chapters address research questions on the relation of syntax to other aspects of grammar and linguistics more generally, including studies on language acquisition, variation and change, and syntactic interfaces. Many of these contributions show the influence of research by Ian Roberts and collaborators and give the reader a sense of the lively nature of current discussion of topics in synchronic and diachronic comparative syntax ranging from the core verbal domain to higher, propositional domains. This book is complemented by volume II available at https://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/276 and volume III available at https://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/277

Tone and intonation: introductory notes and practical recommendations

International audienceThe present article aims to propose a simple introduction to the topics of (i) lexical tone, (ii) intonation, and (iii) tone-intonation interactions, with practical recommendations for students. It builds on the authors' observations on various languages, tonal and non-tonal; much of the evidence reviewed concerns tonal languages of Asia. With a view to providing beginners with an adequate methodological apparatus for studying tone and intonation, the present notes emphasize two salient dimensions of linguistic diversity. The first is the nature of the lexical tones: we review the classical distinction between (i) contour tones that can be analyzed into sequences of level tones, and (ii) contour tones that are non-decomposable (phonetically complex). A second dimension of diversity is the presence or absence of intonational tones: tones of intonational origin that are formally identical with lexical (and morphological) tones

Prosodic Focus Within and Across Languages

The fact that purely prosodic marking of focus may be weaker in some languages than in others, and that it varies in certain circumstances even within a single language, has not been commonly recognized. Therefore, this dissertation investigated whether and how purely prosodic marking of focus varies within and across languages. We conducted production and perception experiments using a paradigm of 10-digit phone-number strings in which the same material and discourse contexts were used in different languages. The results demonstrated that prosodic marking of focus varied across languages. Speakers of American English, Mandarin Chinese, and Standard French clearly modulated duration, pitch, and intensity to indicate the position of corrective focus. Listeners of these languages recognized the focus position with high accuracy. Conversely, speakers of Seoul Korean, South Kyungsang Korean, Tokyo Japanese, and Suzhou Wu produced a weak and ambiguous modulation by focus, resulting in a poor identification performance. This dissertation also revealed that prosodic marking of focus varied even within a single language. In Mandarin Chinese, a focused low/dipping tone (tone 3) received a relatively poor identification rate compared to other focused tones (about 77% vs. 91%). This lower identification performance was due to the smaller capacity of tone 3 for pitch range expansion and local dissimilatory effects around tone 3 focus. In Seoul Korean, prosodic marking of focus differed based on the tonal contrast (post-lexical low vs. high tones). The identification rate of high tones was twice as high than that of low tones (about 24% vs. 51%), the reason being that low tones had a smaller capacity for pitch range expansion than high tones. All things considered, this dissertation demonstrates that prosodic focus is not always expressed by concomitant increased duration, pitch, and intensity. Accordingly, purely prosodic marking of focus is neither completely universal nor automatic, but rather is expressed through the prosodic structure of each language. Since the striking difference in focus-marking success does not seem to be determined by any previously-described typological feature, this must be regarded as an indicator of a new typological dimension, or as a function of a new typological space

Intonation & Prosodic Structure in Beaver (Athabaskan) - Explorations on the language of the Danezaa

This dissertation reports on qualitative and quantitative investigations on the intonation and the prosodic structure of Beaver, an endangered Athabaskan language of Northwest Canada. The focus of the study is on the Northern Alberta dialect of Beaver, which has lexical tone and is a high marking Athabaskan language. The theoretical framework of the analysis is the Autosegmental Metrical (AM) theory. Following some background on intonation and prosody as well as the theoretical modelling, we summarize contributions dealing with intonation in languages that share certain features with Beaver, i.e. tone languages, polysynthetic languages and finally the related Athabaskan languages. After a brief introduction to the grammatical structure and the sociolinguistic situation of Northern Alberta Beaver, the database of the present study is introduced. It consists of narratives and task oriented dialogues as well as recordings elicited with stimuli sets. In the domain of intonation and prosody, three topics are investigated in detail. First, domain initial prosodic strengthening is analyzed. We show that a boundary initial position at higher constituents of the prosodic hierarchy has a lengthening effect on VOT of both aspirated and unaspirated plosives, while nasals are shortened in this context. Additionally, effects of morphological category (stem vs. prefix) and intervocalic position � two mechanisms that have been described for other Athabaskan languages � are also attested for Beaver to some degree. Second, the intonational tones that have been found in the corpus are analyzed within the AM theory. In Northern Alberta Beaver, boundary tones and phrase accents make up the intonational inventory. Most notably, an initial phrase accent is used to mark contrast, which is a device that has not been reported for the marking of information structure in other languages. Lastly, the interaction of information structure with pitch range in complex noun phrases is tested in a controlled experiment. Here, we find that pitch range is significantly wider for new information than for given, which is due to a raising of the top line, while the baseline is not affected to the same extend