English Stresses and Chinese Tones in Chinese Sentences

Cheng, Chin-Chuan

doi:10.1159/000258601

Cited by 28 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 4 publications

(4 reference statements)

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“…The syllable structure of Mandarin, unlike English, is monosyllabic with primarily a basic CV word shape ͑Guo, 1992͒. Suprasegmental features include four ''basic'' tones 3 ͑Cheng, 1968;Gandour, 1978;Howie, 1976;Leben, 1978͒. In a tone language such as Mandarin, a change in tone of a syllable ͑i.e., a word͒ leads to a change of lexical meaning ͑Chao, 1948; Cheng, 1968;Chun, 1982;Dreher and Lee, 1966;Tseng, 1981;Pike, 1948͒. Mandarin is also a syllabletimed language and is generally thought of as showing no strong pattern of stress, with syllable duration remaining relatively constant across a sentence ͑Clark and Yallop, 1995;van Santen and Shih, 2000͒. There are perceptual and acoustic studies which demonstrate that sentence stress occurs in the production of Mandarin.…”

Section: B Sentence Stress In Mandarinmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The magnitude of phonetic inaccuracies appears to be correlated to the amount of experience ͑or length of time͒ speaking English, or the age period during which L2 was acquired ͑Flege, 1995; Guion et al, 2000;Johnson and Newport, 1991͒. It is believed that after a ''critical period,'' L2 learners have difficulty not only accurately articulating L2 segments ͑Flege, 1987;Lennenberg, 1967;Magnuson and Akahane-Yamada, 1996;Pittam and Ingram, 1992͒, but also in acquiring the suprasegmental features of L2 ͑Chun, 1982;Guion et al, 2000;Guzma, 1973;Scuffil, 1982͒. One aspect of American English noted to be of difficulty for native speakers of tonal languages, specifically East Asian languages, is the production of stress placed on syllables or words ͑Cheng, 1968͑Cheng, , 1987Chun, 1982͒. Wijk ͑1966͒ noted over 30 years ago that correct stressing of words presents a major difficulty in the pronunciation of English for individuals who learn English as L2.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A study of sentence stress production in Mandarin speakers of American English

Chen

Robb

Gilbert

et al. 2001

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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Acoustic characteristics of American English sentence stress produced by native Mandarin speakers are reported. Fundamental frequency (F0), vowel duration, and vowel intensity in the sentence-level stress produced by 40 Mandarin speakers were compared to those of 40 American English speakers. Results obtained from two methods of stress calculation indicated that Mandarin speakers of American English are able to differentiate stressed and unstressed words according to features of F0, duration, and intensity. Although the group of Mandarin speakers were able to signal stress in their sentence productions, the acoustic characteristics of stress were not identical to the American speakers. Mandarin speakers were found to produce stressed words with a significantly higher F0 and shorter duration compared to the American speakers. The groups also differed in production of unstressed words with Mandarin speakers using a higher F0 and greater intensity compared to American speakers. Although the acoustic differences observed may reflect an interference of L1 Mandarin in the production of L2 American English, the outcome of this study suggests no critical divergence between these speakers in the way they implement American English sentence stress.

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Section: B Sentence Stress In Mandarinmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A study of sentence stress production in Mandarin speakers of American English

Chen

Robb

Gilbert

et al. 2001

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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“…A well-known example given by Cheng [6] showed explicitly that Mandarin treats English stress and unstress as high tone (H; or 55) and low tone (L; or 21):…”

Section: Interaction In Prosodic Phonologymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Such phenomena can be explained by the interaction between English lexical stress and Cantonese lexical tone -stressed and post-tonic unstressed syllables of English are encoded, respectively, to high (55) and low (21) tones, as discussed in [6,7]. In codemixed speech, if the ending syllable of an English word is stressed, it is encoded to a high-level tone, which gives a flat F 0 contour instead of an F 0 contour with a falling end in monolingual English speech.…”

Section: Variation In F 0 Patternmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prosodic Variation in Cantonese-English Code-Mixed Speech

Lee

Ching

2008

2008 6th International Symposium on Chinese Spoken Language Processing

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This study investigates the prosodic features of Cantonese-English code-mixed speech. It is found that the prosody of the matrix language is hardly altered, while the prosody of the embedded language is assimilated to that of the matrix language. That is, the rhythmic pattern is shifted towards syllable-timing, whereas the variations in the F 0 pattern are mainly in the word-final syllable: for a stressed syllable the F 0 contour turns flat, while for a posttonic unstressed syllable the F 0 contour falls more steeply than in monolingual English speech. Such F 0 variations can be explained by the phonological interaction of English lexical stress and Cantonese lexical tone. In addition, the F 0 of the embedded English word tends to become higher due to the embedding effect.

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“…Tone 3 is a dipping tone when produced in isolation or on the final syllable of an utterance followed by a pause; in a stream of speech Tone 3 is usually produced with a low tone contour (seeCheng, 1968).…”

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confidence: 99%

Prosody, clause typing, and <i>wh</i>-in-situ: Evidence from Mandarin

Gryllia

Doetjes

Yang

et al. 2020

Laboratory Phonology: Journal of the Association for Laboratory Phonology

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This paper examines the use of prosody for marking upcoming linguistic material in speech production and for anticipating them in speech perception. More specifically, it examines whether in the absence of any overt morphosyntactic cues in the beginning of an utterance, speakers use prosodic means to mark the clause type (declarative or wh-question) and whether listeners use these prosodic cues to anticipate the clause type. We report the results of a production and an audio gating experiment. The results of the production experiment show that speakers of Mandarin differentiate declaratives from wh-questions right from the onset of the clause by means of duration, F0, and intensity. The results of the audio gating experiment demonstrate that prosody is used by listeners to anticipate the clause type which is intended by the speaker.

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English Stresses and Chinese Tones in Chinese Sentences

Cited by 28 publications

References 4 publications

A study of sentence stress production in Mandarin speakers of American English

A study of sentence stress production in Mandarin speakers of American English

Prosodic Variation in Cantonese-English Code-Mixed Speech

Prosody, clause typing, and <i>wh</i>-in-situ: Evidence from Mandarin

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