Prosodic Variation of Focused Syllables of Disyllabic Word in Mandarin Chinese

摘要

This paper describes a study on how disyllabic on-focus words under a certain context condition affects the variations of prosodic correlates of syllables in terms of different focal positions in Mandarin Chinese. The study shows that: (1) there is no direct link between semantic structure of disyllabic on-focus words and the prosodic correlates, but an indirect link through the mediation of focus positions; (2) the prosodic correlates of the second syllable are more variable than those of the first syllalbe. specifically, there is a significnat asymmetry of vowel duration and fundamental frequency (F0) range between the pre-focus and post-focus syllables.