The independent effects of prosodic structure and information status on tonal coarticulation
Evidence from Wenzhou Chinese
Various factors constrain the production of a sequence of lexical tones. This
study aims to test the joint influence of three important ones: tonal coarticulation,
prosodic structure, and information status. F0 realization of rising and
falling tones, in both compatible and conflicting tonal contexts, was compared
across two prosodic conditions (prosodic headedness and boundary depth) and
two focus conditions (with vs. without narrow focus). Results show that in conflicting
tonal contexts, where salient coarticulatory adjustment of F0 trajectories
is to be expected, both prosodic structure and information status influenced
the implementation of F0 slopes, albeit in different ways. These findings lend
support to the proposal that information status and prosodic structure exert
independent prosodic strengthening effects on tonal implementation.
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Journal of Phonetics 47
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