Autosegmental–metrical analyses of intonation typically assume a binary opposition between L/H tones, realised as pitch targets within some local pitch range, or register. However, because tone and register can be phonologically independent, a theoretical concern is that an ostensibly threeleveled tone system could be analysed in terms of binary tone plus careful register setting. Plateau conto...

This study investigates the interaction of lexical tone and intonation in embedded clauses in the two-tone Kwa language Akan. The claim is that embedded clauses show recursive prosodic phrasing at the level of intonation phrases (ι-phrase). The prosodic boundary of an embedded clause is expressed by means of a pitch register reset. At the boundary, lexical tonal distinctions are maintained in t...

The present study try to clarify the deep essence and structure of Chinese intonation by objectively approach to the production process of tone and intonation and their interaction based on the acoustic-phonetic observation. Our main attention is paid to examine (1)what is the basic intonation pattern for the whole course of utterance and how it is formed? (2) how the lexical tone patterns inte...

This paper reports an experiment designed to investigate whether post-focus tonal realization is constrained by prosodic structure in Shanghai Chinese (SH). Previous studies have shown that in SH, focus expanded the f0 range of bi-syllabic tone sandhi words while pitch register lowering, instead of pitch range compression, was consistently found on post-focus bi-syllabic tone sandhi words. The ...

________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Acoustic characterization of phonologically voiced obstruents in Shanghai dialect In Shanghainese, phonologically voiced obstruents in word-initial, accented position are phonetically voiceless and are distinguished from the others (i.e., voiceless and/or aspirated) mainly by a low tone regi...

This paper tries to explore the relationship between pitch prominence and tonal typology by examining pitch behavior of the 3 tone, a low register tone, in different accent contexts under Mandarin Chinese. The primary results obtained so far show that, pitch level of the 3 tone is obviously lowered in focal condition, which is mainly manifested by lowering the L-point value of its F0, rather th...

From the perspective of areal linguistics, this paper examines similarities in tonal behavior between Sinitic and Kam-Tai, two most populous language groups Lingnan. By relying on some frameworks for investigating tone systems, i.e., tone-box theories, which largely involve evolution tones, following duplicating patterns paths diffusion features are identified. (1) The secondary split condition...

Research on spoken word recognition in Indo-European languages often does not incorporate prosody. In Mandarin Chinese, however, lexical prosody is used extensively and has been shown to affect word processing in previous studies. The present study uses the gating paradigm to investigate the processing of the four Mandarin tones as well as the role of the initial segment in processing. Duration...