Effects of Focus on Prosody of Cantonese Speech – A Comparison of Surface Feature Analysis and Model-Based Analysis

The effects of focus on F0 contours and syllable durations of spoken Cantonese are investigated through a controlled experiment involving all the disyllabic tone pairs. Regardless of the tones, syllable durations in the vicinity of the on-focus syllable are lengthened in systematically varying rates. For F0 pattern, two approaches are compared: analysis of surface features from time-normalized F0 contours, and analysis-bysynthesis of time-intact F0 contours based on the commandresponse model. The effects of focus on surface F0 features, if any, include raise of F0 values and expansion of F0 ranges, which are similarly shown in pre-focus, on-focus, and postfocus domains. These surface phenomena can be explained better by tone and phrase commands in the model. Finally, a general framework is proposed by integrating these analyses.