Prosodic Realization of Focus in Changchun Mandarin and Nanjing Mandarin

Abstract

This study was designed to explore the prosodic patterns of focus in two dialects of Mandarin. One is Changchun Mandarin and the other is Nanjing Mandarin. The current paper compares the acoustics of their prosodic realization of focus in a production experiment. Similar to standard Mandarin, which uses in-focus expansion and concomitantly post-focus compression (PFC) to code focus, results in the current study indicate that both Changchun and Nanjing speakers produced significant in-focus expansion of pitch, intensity and duration and PFC of pitch and intensity in their Mandarin dialects. Meanwhile, the results show no significant difference of prosodic changes between Changchun and Nanjing Mandarin productions. These results reveal that PFC not only exists in standard Mandarin but also in Mandarin dialects.