Communications in Humanities Research
- The Open Access Proceedings Series for Conferences
Communications in Humanities Research
Vol. 21, 07 December 2023
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An Experimental Phonetic Study on “Discontinuity-Continuity” Effects of Chinese Prosodic Boundaries at Different Levels under the Influence of Focus in Different Positions
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Abstract
The production of fluent speech in Mandarin requires the modulation of both discontinuity and continuity effects, with prosodic boundaries and focus stress serving as crucial control factors. Previous research has focused on the acoustic properties of focus which is independent of prosodic boundaries. In this study, whether different focus positions can affect the discontinuity-continuity effects at prosodic boundaries of distinct levels would be investigated. The results of acoustic analysis reveal the following findings: (1) The discontinuity effect is mainly influenced by the boundary level types, while the continuity effect is primarily influenced by the focus position; (2) When the focus is positioned before or after the prosodic boundary, the focus context tends to weaken the control of the boundary level over the discontinuity and continuity effects. When the focus coincides with the boundary or is at the sentence-final position, the focus context tends to enhance the control of the boundary level over the discontinuity and continuity effects; (3) Focus and the prosodic hierarchy are two independent encoding systems, each with its own autonomy. However, both systems share prosodic resources in speech production, leading to cooperation and competition between the two to achieve a balanced intonational state. The impact of different focus positions in natural speech on the “discontinuity-continuity” effects at different levels of prosodic boundaries in natural speech highlights this inherent contradiction.
Keywords
focus, prosodic boundaries, discontinuity-continuity effects, Mandarin
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Data Availability
The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study will be available from the authors upon reasonable request.
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- Volume Title
- Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Interdisciplinary Humanities and Communication Studies
- ISBN (Print)
- 978-1-83558-185-8
- ISBN (Online)
- 978-1-83558-186-5
- Published Date
- 07 December 2023
- Series
- Communications in Humanities Research
- ISSN (Print)
- 2753-7064
- ISSN (Online)
- 2753-7072
- DOI
- 10.54254/2753-7064/21/20231436
- Copyright
- 07 December 2023
- Open Access
- This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited