Clause type anticipation based on prosody in Mandarin
Yang Yang | Center for Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies | Leiden University Centre for Linguistics
Stella Gryllia | Leiden University Centre for Linguistics
Leticia Pablos | Leiden University Centre for Linguistics | Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition
Lisa Lai-Shen Cheng | Leiden University Centre for Linguistics | Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition
Mandarin wh-words such as shénme are wh-indeterminates, which
can have interrogative interpretations (‘what’) or non-interrogative interpretations (i.e., ‘something’), depending on the context
and licensors. For example, when diǎnr (‘a little’) appears right in front of a wh-word, the
string can have either a wh-question or a declarative interpretation (henceforth,
wh-declarative). Yang (2018) carried out a production study and the
results showed that wh-questions and wh-declaratives have different prosodic properties. To
investigate whether and when listeners make use of prosody to anticipate the clause type (i.e., question vs. declarative), we
conducted a sentence perception study and an audio-gating experiment. Results of the perception study and the gating experiment
show that (1) Participants can make use of prosody to differentiate the two clause types; (2) Starting from the onset of the first
word of the target sentence (wh-question/wh-declarative), participants already demonstrate a
preference for the clause type that was intended by the speaker. The current study also sheds light on the clausal typing
mechanism in Mandarin (e.g., how to mark a clause as a wh-question) by providing evidence of the role of prosody
in marking clause types in Mandarin.
Keywords: Mandarin wh-declarative/wh-question, clause type anticipation, prosody, perception and gating paradigm, clausal typing
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 1.1Anticipation in language
- 1.2Anticipation and prosody
- 1.3Clause type anticipation and prosody
- 1.3.1Previous studies
- 1.3.2The case of Mandarin
- 1.4Mandarin clause type anticipation and the clausal typing mechanism
- 1.5Research questions
- 2.Perception experiment
- 2.1Participants
- 2.2Audio stimuli
- 2.2.1Prosodic properties of the stimuli
- Duration
- F0
- 2.2.1Prosodic properties of the stimuli
- 2.3Procedure
- 2.4Analysis and results
- 2.5Interim discussion
- 3.Audio-gating experiment
- 3.1Participants
- 3.2Stimuli
- 3.3Procedure
- 3.4Results
- 3.5Interim discussion
- 4.General discussion
- 4.1Clause type identification and anticipation based on prosody
- 4.2The theoretical implication on clausal typing mechanism
- 4.3Conclusion
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
-
References
Published online: 02 July 2019
https://doi.org/10.1075/ijchl.18004.yan
https://doi.org/10.1075/ijchl.18004.yan
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