Articulatory Prosody: A comparison of Mandarin Chinese and Japanese

Abstract

This paper is a synopsis of a series of research studies previously reported about articulatory prosody, based on jaw displacement data collected from Mandarin Chinese and Japanese speakers using electromagnetic articulography (EMA). On one hand, Mandarin Chinese has tone contrast while Japanese has pitch accents. However, the experimental data suggest that in terms of articulatory prosody, they are similar. The term ‘articulatory prosody” as discussed here is used to describe prosodically-motivated jaw displacement patterns. Both Mandarin Chinese and Japanese have final and initial phrasal stress, implemented by increased jaw displacement, and the jaw displacement patterns seem to be independent of the F0 contours of the tones/pitch accents. Acoustically, both Mandarin Chinese and Japanese show F1 increases with increased jaw displacement; Mandarin Chinese also shows increased duration. The results suggest that for both Mandarin Chinese and Japanese, it is the pattern of jaw displacement that provides the underlying prosodic framework of phrase-initial and phrase-final stress, resulting in increased F1 for (the low vowel /a/) in both languages, and increased duration for Mandarin Chinese.