Durational and Pitch Marking of Rhetorical Wh-questions in Mandarin

Lo, Ryan; Kiss, Angelika

doi:10.21437/speechprosody.2020-88

Cited by 3 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…Voice quality. We find that Standard Chinese RQs are more often realized with glottalized voice than string-identical ISQs (see also Lo & Kiss, 2020, on creaky voice in sentence-final particles in wh-RQs). This was the case for both the first word, the final syllable of the noun and the sentence-final particle, although glottalization was generally more frequent towards the end of the utterance.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 63%

“…In Section 4.2, we address the implications of the interplay between prosodic cues to RQs for the modelling of the relation between prosody and meaning. associated with the sentence-final particle than corresponding wh-ISQs (Lo & Kiss, 2020;Lo et al, 2019a). Lower mean f0 is not restricted to tone languages but also occurs in intonation languages (Beyssade & Delais-Roussarie, 2022 for French;Sahkai et al, 2022 for Estonian; other studies on intonation languages have focused on the differences in pitch accents and boundary tones rather than on global features of f0 to arrive at a more detailed and language-specific analysis).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Research on the prosody of RQs has only recently included tone languagesbut has so far been restricted to one question type: wh-questions (Lo & Kiss, 2020;Lo, Kiss, & Tulling, 2019b). Tone languages are particularly interesting since they pose questions for the interaction between lexical tone and post-lexical intonation in the marking of illocution type (Chen, 2022 for overview).…”

Section: Rhetorical Questions and How They Are Signalledmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For Cantonese, a tone language with six lexical tones (Zhang, Duanmu, & Chen, 2021 for overview), Lo, Kiss, and Tulling (2019a) investigated the sentence-final particles in wh-questions and found them to be longer and lower in RQs than in ISQs. Lo and Kiss (2020) furthermore studied wh-questions in Mandarin Chinese and found wh-RQs to be overall longer than string-identical ISQs, except for the sentence-final particle. Moreover, the sentence-final particle was lower in f0 in RQs as compared to ISQs, and more often realized with glottalized voice; in turn, the wh-word was higher in RQs as compared to ISQs.…”

Section: Rhetorical Questions and How They Are Signalledmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Since illocution type and question type did not interact (p adj = 0.91), we assume that durational differences between ISQs and RQs hold independently of question type. For exploratory purposes, we assessed whether the longer duration in RQs was carried by a specific part in the utterance (Lo & Kiss, 2020; or whether the lengthening applied globally). To this end, we tested for an interaction between illocution type and word in an omnibus model that combined polar and wh-questions.…”

Section: Durationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The prosodic marking of rhetorical questions in Standard Chinese

Zahner¹,

Xu²,

Chen³

et al. 2020

Speech Prosody 2020

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The present study investigates the prosody of information-seeking (ISQs) and rhetorical questions (RQs) in Standard Chinese, in polar and wh-questions. Like in other languages, ISQs and RQs in Standard Chinese can have the same surface structure, allowing for a direct prosodic comparison between illocution types (ISQ vs RQ). Since Standard Chinese has lexical tone, the use of f0 as a cue to illocution type may be restricted. We investigate the prosodic differences between ISQs and RQs as well as the interplay of prosodic cues to RQs. In terms of f0, results showed that RQs were lower in f0, with the f0 range on the first word being expanded followed by f0 compression. RQs were further longer in duration and more often realized with non-modal voice quality (glottalized voice) as compared to ISQs. These prosodic cues were largely manipulated in tandem (illocutionary pairs with larger durational differences also showed larger differences in mean f0; voice quality, in turn, seemed to be an additional cue). We suggest three possible explanations (assertive force, focus, speaker attitude) that unite the present findings on RQs in Standard Chinese with the findings on RQs in other, non-tonal languages.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 63%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Rhetorical Questions and How They Are Signalledmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Rhetorical Questions and How They Are Signalledmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Durationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The prosodic marking of rhetorical questions in Standard Chinese

Zahner¹,

Xu²,

Chen³

et al. 2020

Speech Prosody 2020

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Voice quality and speaking rate in Icelandic rhetorical questions

Dehé¹,

Wochner²

2022

Nord J Linguist

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In this paper, we show that Icelandic uses the phonetic parameters of speaking rate, duration and voice quality (VQ) to distinguish between information-seeking questions (ISQs) and rhetorical questions (RQs). Specifically, durations are longer (speaking rate is slower) and nonmodal VQs are used more in RQs than in ISQs. Our findings for temporal parameters fit in with previous studies on the prosody of RQs in various languages. With respect to VQ, Icelandic differs, for example, from German and English in the location of breathy voice in the utterance (utterance-initial in German and English, utterance-final in Icelandic). We interpret the utterance-final position of breathiness in Icelandic RQs as a potential compensating strategy for the lack of phonological cues, i.e. boundary tones.

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The prosody of rhetorical questions: a cross-linguistic view

Dehé¹,

Braun²,

Einfeldt³

et al. 2022

Linguistische Berichte (LB)

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This paper provides a survey of our knowledge of the prosody of rhetorical questions, i.e. questions that do not require an answer and try to commit the listener to the presupposed answer, as compared to the prosody of string-identical genuine, information seeking-questions. The survey includes semantic literature on questions, corpus data, and experimental evidence from production and perception experiments. It covers a range of typologically different languages (German, English, Icelandic, Italian, Standard Chinese, Cantonese, Japanese, French) that have different word-level and phrase-level characteristics. The main finding is that rhetorical and information seeking questions differ reliably in terms of the following prosodic characteristics: (i) f0-features (e.g., position and type of pitch accent, type of boundary tone, as well as more global f0-parameters, depending on language type); (ii) duration / speaking rate (rhetorical questions are typically longer / produced with slower speaking rate than information-seeking questions). Often, but not always, rhetorical questions are produced with non-modal voice quality.

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Durational and Pitch Marking of Rhetorical Wh-questions in Mandarin

Cited by 3 publications

References 7 publications

The prosodic marking of rhetorical questions in Standard Chinese

The prosodic marking of rhetorical questions in Standard Chinese

Voice quality and speaking rate in Icelandic rhetorical questions

The prosody of rhetorical questions: a cross-linguistic view

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