Intonation Systems of Mandarin and English
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THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO INTONATION SYSTEMS OF MANDARIN AND ENGLISH: A FUNCTIONAL APPROACH A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE DIVISION OF THE HUMANITIES IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS BY FANG LIU CHICAGO, ILLINOIS MARCH 2009 This dissertation is dedicated to the memory of my father, Guangqi Liu (1936-2008), who should have lived to see its completion. TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES ...................................................................................................v LIST OF FIGURES ...............................................................................................vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS..................................................................................xi ABSTRACT .............................................................................................................xv 1 INTRODUCTION ..............................................................................................1 1.1 Form and function...............................................................................................1 1.2 Structure of the dissertation...............................................................................10 2 PRODUCTION AND PERCEPTION OF STATEMENTS AND QUESTIONS IN MANDARIN...........................................................................14 2.1 Introduction.......................................................................................................14 2.2 Experiment 1: Production of Statements and Questions in Mandarin.................20 2.2.1 Methods ......................................................................................................20 2.2.2 Results ........................................................................................................24 2.2.3 Discussion...................................................................................................41 2.3 Experiment 2: Perception of Statements and Questions in Mandarin .................42 2.3.1 Methods ......................................................................................................42 2.3.2 Results ........................................................................................................43 2.3.3 Discussion...................................................................................................47 2.4 Summary of Experiments 1 and 2.......................................................................48 3 EXPERIMENT 3: AUTOMATIC CLASSIFICATION OF STATEMENT AND QUESTION INTONATION IN MANDARIN.......52 3.1 Introduction.......................................................................................................52 3.2 Methods.............................................................................................................57 3.3 Analysis.............................................................................................................58 3.3.1 Coefficients from cubic B-spline regressions...............................................58 3.3.2 Original final F0’s of the 10 syllables...........................................................66 3.3.3 Normalized final F0’s of the 10 syllables .....................................................69 3.3.4 Summary of the classification trees in sections 3.3.1 – 3.3.3........................76 3.4 Cross-validation ................................................................................................77 3.5 Discussion .........................................................................................................79 iii iv 4 THE INTERACTION OF LEXICAL TONE/STRESS, FOCUS, AND SENTENCE TYPE IN MANDARIN AND ENGLISH ...............................82 4.1 Introduction.......................................................................................................82 4.1.1 The interaction of sentence type with tone and focus in Mandarin ...............83 4.1.2 The interaction of sentence type with lexical stress and focus in English .....86 4.1.3 Question Intonation in Mandarin and English: Why compare them and how?.. ....................................................................................................................89 4.2 Experiment 4: The Neutral Tone in Statements and Questions in Mandarin.......93 4.2.1 Materials .....................................................................................................93 4.2.2 Subjects.......................................................................................................95 4.2.3 Procedure ....................................................................................................95 4.2.4 Results ........................................................................................................96 4.2.5 Discussion.................................................................................................115 4.3 Experiment 5: Statements and Yes/no Questions in General American English 116 4.3.1 Materials ...................................................................................................116 4.3.2 Subjects.....................................................................................................117 4.3.3 Procedure ..................................................................................................117 4.3.4 Results ......................................................................................................118 4.3.5 Discussion.................................................................................................129 4.4 Summary of Experiments 4 and 5.....................................................................131 5 INTONATION SYSTEMS OF MANDARIN AND ENGLISH: A FUNCTIONAL APPROACH...........................................................................133 5.1 General Discussion — Comparing the two languages......................................133 5.2 Further Discussion ..........................................................................................140 5.3 Conclusions.....................................................................................................146 6 CONCLUSIONS .............................................................................................148 REFERENCES .....................................................................................................154 LIST OF TABLES Table 2.1. Basic sentence frames used for constructing test materials. ...........................21 Table 2.2. Results of repeated-measures ANOVAs on the effect of focus on the global F0 curve..................................................................................................................29 Table 2.3. Results of repeated-measures ANOVAs on the effect of sentence type on the global F0 curve. “Q” stands for question. ...........................................................34 Table 2.4. t values of linear, exponential and double exponential regressions for four focus types.........................................................................................................38 Table 2.5. Matrix of classification percentage (%) for each combination of sentence type and focus. “S” stands for statement, and “Q” for question. .................................44 Table 2.6. Mean accuracy rate of focus perception for each lexical tone grouped by sentence type and focus (collapsed across gender). ............................................45 Table 2.7. Mean accuracy rates of sentence type perception for each lexical tone grouped by sentence type and focus (collapsed across gender).........................................46 Table 3.1. The supports of the thirteen columns (and thus bs1 – bs13) in the model matrix (see Figure 3.6)..................................................................................................61 Table 3.2. Summary of the classification trees in sections 3.3.1 – 3.3.3. ........................76 Table 3.3. Summary of the cross-validation results........................................................78 Table 4.1. Mean F0 (in st) and pitch span (in st) of syllables in Mandarin statements and questions. Potential focus locations are bolded.................................................103 Table 4.2. Results of the main effects from repeated measures ANOVAs of mean F0 (in st) of each syllable on sex (Female vs. Male), focus (Nonadjacent: on măi vs. Adjacent: on mā/yé/năi/mèi), sentence type (Question vs. Statement), final tone (High vs. Neutral), and preceding tone (High, Rising, Low, or Falling). The effects with p-values less than 0.05 are bolded.................................................104 Table 4.3. Results of the main effects from repeated measures ANOVAs of pitch span (Max F0 – Min F0, in st) of each syllable on sex (Female vs. Male), focus (Nonadjacent: on măi vs. Adjacent: on mā/yé/năi/mèi), sentence type (Question vs. Statement), final tone (High vs. Neutral), and preceding tone (High, Rising, Low, or Falling). The effects with p-values less than 0.05 are bolded............... 107 Table 4.4. Results of the main effects from repeated measures ANOVAs of duration of each syllable on sex (Female vs. Male), focus (Nonadjacent: on măi vs. Adjacent: on mā/yé/năi/mèi), sentence type (Question vs. Statement), final tone (High vs. Neutral), and preceding tone (High, Rising, Low, or Falling). The effects with p- values less than 0.05 are bolded. ......................................................................111 Table 4.5. Mean final velocities (st/s) of sentence-final