Pitch contours of Northern Vietnamese tones vary with focus marking

Intonation is a means of structuring discourse and one of its functions is to highlight new or contrasting information, i.e., focus. Speakers of different languages use a range of prosodic cues to mark focus. Compared to non-tonal languages such as English, tonal languages use pitch to distinguish lexical tones and focus marking. Determining the interplay between intonation and lexical tone is therefore important. Previous studies found that tonal languages use different strategies to mark focus. For example, some use an increase (e.g., Mandarin Chinese), others a decrease in pitch (e.g., Kammu). The Vietnamese language has six lexical tones and is particularly interesting for examining pitch contours in focus marking. In this article, we present a production study with 70 Northern Vietnamese speakers. Participants read six sentences aloud under two different conditions (narrow/wide focus). In each sentence, focus marked a single noun (‘focus item’) which occurred in the final position of the sentence and carried one of the six tones. Acoustic analyses of the focus item showed that Vietnamese speakers realized focus with significant differences in pitch at the beginning of the word, but the strategies to increase or decrease pitch varied across tones. Our findings add important insights to the discussion about Information Structure and the role of intonation in tonal languages by analyzing the use of prosodic cues in a complex tone system. The large number of speakers in our study also adds further methodological rigor compared to other studies, which often rely on a few speakers.1 Introduction 2 Using intonation for focus marking 2.1 Focus marking with intonation in tonal languages 2.2 Using intonation to mark pragmatic functions and focus in Vietnamese 3 Method 3.1 Participants 3.3 Material 3.2 Procedure 3.3 Pitch Analysis 4 Results 5 Discussio

Pitch contours of Northern Vietnamese tones vary with focus marking

Intonation is a means of structuring discourse and one of its functions is to highlight new or contrasting information, i.e., focus. Speakers of different languages use a range of prosodic cues to mark focus. Compared to non-tonal languages such as English, tonal languages use pitch to distinguish lexical tones and focus marking. Determining the interplay between intonation and lexical tone is therefore important. Previous studies found that tonal languages use different strategies to mark focus. For example, some use an increase (e.g., Mandarin Chinese), others a decrease in pitch (e.g., Kammu). The Vietnamese language has six lexical tones and is particularly interesting for examining pitch contours in focus marking. In this article, we present a production study with 70 Northern Vietnamese speakers. Participants read six sentences aloud under two different conditions (narrow/wide focus). In each sentence, focus marked a single noun (‘focus item’) which occurred in the final position of the sentence and carried one of the six tones. Acoustic analyses of the focus item showed that Vietnamese speakers realized focus with significant differences in pitch at the beginning of the word, but the strategies to increase or decrease pitch varied across tones. Our findings add important insights to the discussion about Information Structure and the role of intonation in tonal languages by analyzing the use of prosodic cues in a complex tone system. The large number of speakers in our study also adds further methodological rigor compared to other studies, which often rely on a few speakers

Contextual Conditions for Acculturation and Adjustment of Adolescent Immigrants – Integrating Theory and Findings

In this paper we review the literature on contextual conditions related to the school, the family, and ethnic or immigrant-group membership, and their association with adjustment outcomes of adolescent immigrants in Europe. Drawing on theories in the areas of acculturation and development, the first aim was to develop a conceptual framework, which integrates acculturative and developmental processes in early adolescence and can guide the literature review in this area. The second aim was to identify the most important conditions for adolescent immigrants’ acculturation and adjustment outcomes in school and the family, and related to immigrant-group membership

The genus <i>Nitzschia</i> on the South Shetland Islands and James Ross Island

The purpose of this study was to present LM and SEM observations of Nitzschia taxa encountered on the South Shetland Islands and James Ross Island. During the ongoing taxonomical revision of the freshwater and limno-terrestrial diatom flora on the South Shetland Islands and James Ross Island (Maritime Antarctic Region) eight unknown taxa belonging to the genus Nitzschia were found. These taxa were previously force-fitted into European names such as N. commutata or N. perminuta, but detailed light and scanning electron microscopical observations allowed their separation from the already known taxa and resulted in the description of eight new species. The paper discusses all twelve Nitzschia taxa found in the Maritime Antarctic Region. New taxa are compared to the morphologically most similar taxa and their ecology and biogeography are discussed. Although the genus Nitzschia is present worldwide, a large number of Nitzschia taxa have a restricted distribution within the Antarctic Region, showing a clear bioregionalism