Interaction Between Lexical Tone and Intonation: An EMA Study

This paper aims to examine the interaction of intonation and lexical tone within the framework of Articulatory Phonology, by investigating the timing relationship between oral articulatory gestures and tone-related/intonation-related F0 dynamics. Specifically, we compared the consonant-vowel-F0 (C-V-T) coordinative patterns at phrase-final position and at phrase-medial position. We found that the C-V-T coordination was altered by the presence of boundary tones, which is in line with the sequential model in which tone and intonation are conceptualized as events that interact at the phonological level before the phonetic implementation. However, the effect of boundary tone on the C-V-T coordination seemed to be tone-specific. Moreover, the presence of pitch accents also influenced the intra-syllabic C-V-T coordinative patterns. By presenting evidence from the coordinative patterns between articulatory gestures and F0 dynamics, the current study lent support to the sequential model of the interaction between intonation and lexical tone from a gestural perspective.