Aoju Chen

Language-specificity in the perception of paralinguistic intonational meaning.

This study examines the perception of paralinguistic intonational meanings deriving from Ohalas Frequency Code (Experiment 1) and Gussenhovens Effort Code (Experiment 2) in British English and Dutch. Native speakers of British English and Dutch listened to a number of stimuli in their native language and judged each stimulus on four semantic scales deriving from these two codes: SELF-CONFIDENT versus NOT SELF-CONFIDENT, FRIENDLY versus NOT FRIENDLY (Frequency Code); SURPRISED versus NOT SURPRISED, and EMPHATIC versus NOT EMPHATIC (Effort Code). The stimuli, which were lexically equivalent across the two languages, differed in pitch contour, pitch register and pitch span in Experiment 1, and in pitch register, peak height, peak alignment and end pitch in Experiment 2. Contrary to the traditional view that the paralinguistic usage of intonation is similar across languages, it was found that British English and Dutch listeners differed considerably in the perception of “confident,” “friendly,” “emphatic,” and “surprised.” The present findings support a theory of paralinguistic meaning based on the universality of biological codes, which however acknowledges a language-specific component in the implementation of these codes.

Use of Prosody and Information Structure in High Functioning Adults with Autism in Relation to Language Ability

Abnormal prosody is a striking feature of the speech of those with Autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but previous reports suggest large variability among those with ASD. Here we show that part of this heterogeneity can be explained by level of language functioning. We recorded semi-spontaneous but controlled conversations in adults with and without ASD and measured features related to pitch and duration to determine (1) general use of prosodic features, (2) prosodic use in relation to marking information structure, specifically, the emphasis of new information in a sentence (focus) as opposed to information already given in the conversational context (topic), and (3) the relation between prosodic use and level of language functioning. We found that, compared to typical adults, those with ASD with high language functioning generally used a larger pitch range than controls but did not mark information structure, whereas those with moderate language functioning generally used a smaller pitch range than controls but marked information structure appropriately to a large extent. Both impaired general prosodic use and impaired marking of information structure would be expected to seriously impact social communication and thereby lead to increased difficulty in personal domains, such as making and keeping friendships, and in professional domains, such as competing for employment opportunities.

Acquiring Complex Focus-Marking : Finnish 4- to 5-Year-Olds Use Prosody and Word Order in Interaction

Using a language game to elicit short sentences in various information structural conditions, we found that Finnish 4- to 5-year-olds already exhibit a characteristic interaction between prosody and word order in marking information structure. Providing insights into the acquisition of this complex system of interactions, the production data showed interesting parallels to adult speakers of Finnish on the one hand and to children acquiring other languages on the other hand. Analyzing a total of 571 sentences produced by 16 children, we found that children rarely adjusted input word order, but did systematically avoid marked OVS order in contrastive object focus condition. Focus condition also significantly affected four prosodic parameters, f0, duration, pauses and voice quality. Differing slightly from effects displayed in adult Finnish speech, the children produced larger f0 ranges for words in contrastive focus and smaller ones for unfocused words, varied only the duration of object constituents to be longer in focus and shorter in unfocused condition, inserted more pauses before and after focused constituents and systematically modified their use of non-modal voice quality only in utterances with narrow focus. Crucially, these effects were modulated by word order. In contrast to comparable data from children acquiring Germanic languages, the present findings reflect the more central role of word order and of interactions between word order and prosody in marking information structure in Finnish. Thus, the study highlights the role of the target language in determining linguistic development.

Quiet is the New Loud : Pausing and Focus in Child and Adult Dutch

In a number of languages, prosody is used to highlight new information (or focus). In Dutch, focus is marked by accentuation, whereby focal constituents are accented and post-focal constituents are de-accented. Even if pausing is not traditionally seen as a cue to focus in Dutch, several previous studies have pointed to a possible relationship between pausing and information structure. Considering that Dutch-speaking 4 to 5 year olds are not yet completely proficient in using accentuation for focus and that children generally pause more than adults, we asked whether pausing might be an available parameter for children to manipulate for focus. Sentences with varying focus structure were elicited from 10 Dutch-speaking 4 to 5 year olds and 9 Dutch-speaking adults by means of a picture-matching game. Comparing pause durations before focal and non-focal targets showed pre-target pauses to be significantly longer when the targets were focal than when they were not. Notably, the use of pausing was more robust in the children than in the adults, suggesting that children exploit pausing to mark focus more generally than adults do, at a stage where their mastery of the canonical cues to focus is still developing.

The Developmental Path to Adult-Like Prosodic Focus-Marking in Mandarin Chinese-Speaking Children.

This study investigates how children acquire prosodic focus-marking in Mandarin Chinese. Using a picture-matching game, we elicited spontaneous production of sentences in various focus conditions from children aged four to eleven. We found that Mandarin Chinese-speaking children use some pitch-related cues in some tones and duration in all tones in an adult-like way to distinguish focus from non-focus at the age of four to five. Their use of pitch-related cues is not yet fully adult-like in certain tones at the age of eleven. Further, they are adult-like in the use of duration in distinguishing narrow focus from broad focus at four or five but in not using pitch-related cues for this purpose at seven or eight. The later acquisition of pitch-related cues may be related to the use of pitch for lexical purposes, and the differences in the use of pitch in different tones can be explained by differences in how easy it is to vary pitch-related parameters without changing tonal identity.

Intonational Realization of Declarative Questions in Bai

This study investigates intonational realization of declarative questions in Southern Bai, a Sino-Tibetan tone language spoken in the southwest of China, by using a semispontaneous experimental approach. Our data shows that Bai speakers use prosody by lengthening the duration, expanding the pitch span, and raising the pitch maximum and minimum of the sentence-middle constituents to distinguish declarative questions from statements, regardless of focus condition. However, they vary the use of pitch span and pitch minimum with different lexical tones. These results thus suggest that sentence-medial prosody is different between statements and declarative questions in Bai. Furthermore, the modification of prosodic cues for encoding interrogativity appears to be sensitive to lexical tones in Bai.

L1 Effects on L2 comprehension of focus-to-prosody mapping: A comparison between Cantonese and Dutch learners of English

This study investigates how L2 learners use prosody in the comprehension of focus in sentences with the focus particle only and how L1 modulates L2 comprehension, through a cross-linguistic comparison between Cantoneseand Dutchlearners of English. The realization of focus is language specific: prosody is the primary device to encode focus in Dutch and English whereas it is less important than other linguistic devices in Cantonese to mark focus. In a comprehension experiment, participants were presented with question-answer dialogues and were asked to judge whether the answer made sense for the question in a certain context. The results revealed significant differences between the L2 groups: Cantonese learners showed similar percentage of ‘yes’ judgments and reaction times (RTs) across the conditions regardless of prosody and focus position, whereas Dutch learners, like native English controls, showed a significantly lower percentage of ‘yes’ judgments and longer RTs for answers with inappropriate prosody than those with appropriate prosody. Our findings reveal L1 effects on L2 comprehension of the mapping between focus and prosody.

Prosodic focus marking in Dali Mandarin

This study investigated prosodic marking of focus in Dali Mandarin, a variety of Xinan Guanhua (Southwestern Mandarin) spoken in Dali city, the capital of Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture, China. Dali Mandarin as a variety of Mandarin has had heavy contact with Bai, a Tibeto-Burman language, for a long time. We adopted a semi-spontaneous experimental approach to elicit SVO sentences with different focus conditions. Our data showed that native speakers of Dali Mandarin lengthened the duration of focal constituents compared to non-focal constituents for marking focus. However, they did not use duration to distinguish focus types differing in size and contrastivity. Further, pitch played no role at all in signaling focus, nor in differentiating focus types. These results thus suggested that Dali Mandarin speakers use prosody by exploiting duration to mark focus. Therefore, the encoding of focus in Dali Mandarin is more similar to Bai than to Beijing Mandarin, the latter being genetically more closely related to Dali Mandarin. This result suggests that prosodic focus marking in Dali Mandarin has been influenced by Bai due to the heavy language contact.