Focus encoding and prosodic structure in Shanghai Chinese

摘要

This paper investigated the phonetic effects of contrastive focus on F0, duration, and intensity patterns in disyllabic groups which undergo left-and right-dominant sandhis in Shanghai Chinese, in order to further the authors' understanding of the nature of a left-/right-dominant sandhi and the relation between focus encoding and prosodic structure. Results showed that the left-dominant sandhi was characterized by tone rightward spreading and formed one prosodic word, while the right-dominant sandhi was characterized by phonetic reduction and formed one prosodic phrase. Furthermore, F0 adjustment patterns induced by focus were different in the two sandhis, which indicated that focus was encoded via the prosodic structure. (C) 2017 Acoustical Society of America