EFFECTS OF FOCUS UPON DURATIONAL PATTERNS OF FIVE-SYLLABLE WORDS IN STANDARD CHINESE

Yuan Jia1, Aijun Li2, Ziyu Xiong2 & Yiya Chen3
1English Department, Nankai University, China; 2Institute of Linguistics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, China; 3Department of Linguistics, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, Holland

ID 1399
[full paper]

ABSTRACT This paper explicitly examines the influence of focus on durational patterns of five-syllable words with various positions and different tones in Standard Chinese. Target sentences were constructed that focus elicited on the constituents which were located at the beginning of the sentences. For the within-word syllables of the focused constituents, they were designed in various positions in the words and associated with the tones of tone1, tone2 and tone4. Results of the experiments show that although focus induces significant lengthening of the focused constitutes, the internal durational adjustment of each focused syllable is by no means symmetric and the magnitude of such lengthening is determined by the metrical structure of the focused constituents. Keywords: focus; five-syllable words; durational pattern

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