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H%, L% and Everything Between

H%, L% and Everything Between. Phonetic and Phonological Variation in Mandarin Intonation. Patrick Callier Georgetown University Department of Linguistics. Intonation and Social Meaning. Universal interpretations Bolinger (1989), Cruttenden (1995) ‏ Social meanings

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H%, L% and Everything Between

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  1. H%, L% and Everything Between Phonetic and Phonological Variation in Mandarin Intonation Patrick Callier Georgetown University Department of Linguistics

  2. Intonation and Social Meaning • Universal interpretations • Bolinger (1989), Cruttenden (1995)‏ • Social meanings • McConnell-Ginet (1983), Warren and Britain (2000), Cheng and Warren (2005), McLemore (1991)‏

  3. Intonation and Social Meaning • Rising declaratives in English • Britain (1992), Cruttenden (1995), Lowry (2002), Grabe (2004), Cheng and Warren (2005)‏ • Rises in other languages • Queen (2006)‏

  4. Intonation in Mandarin • Phonetic investigations • Shen (1990): higher pitch register in yes/no-questions • Autosegmental analyses (Peng et al. 2006)‏ • series of “pitch targets” • sentence-level intonation and lexical tone interfere • The description of Mandarin intonation: M-ToBI • Phrase-initial tones control pitch range and register • e.g. %e-prom, for expanded pitch range in narrow focus • Phrase-final boundary tones specify final pitch target • H% = F0 to relatively high final position • L% = F0 to relatively low final position

  5. How to study Mandarin intonation in naturalistic speech? • Naturalistic data important • Tone-intonation interference • “Intonation carriers” (Chao 1968)‏ • final-rise and final-fall as sentence-final particles • can be carried on atonic sentence-final syllables • shuo-de bu dui asay-COMP not right PRT“That’s not right!” or “Is that not right?”

  6. Data and Methods • Corpus: HKUST Mandarin Telephone (LDC)‏ • brief telephone conversations between Mainland speakers • Focus: sentence-final particle ma • occurs with yes/no-questions, assertions, directives, and topical constituents • “heightened commitment” to the illocution (Li 2006)‏ • Data: randomly selected utterances ending in ma (n=125 utterances)‏ • coded for characteristics of speaker and situation, discourse and utterance properties, phonetic and phonological variables

  7. Methods • Quantitative analysis • regression • uncover patterns of distribution • Qualitative analysis • focus on “extreme” variants • sketch a picture of meanings in interactional context

  8. Dependent Variables • Phrase-final boundary tone: H%, L% • categorical variable • Phrase-final lengthening: Duration of utterance-final ma • continuous variable, in milliseconds • Pitch range of utterance-final ma • continuous variable, in bark

  9. Independent Variables • Speaker Sex: male, female • same for interlocutor sex • Speaker Age: 18-40 • “Accent”: Standard, Nonstandard • rated by corpus builders • Turn-final: does ma occur at the end of turn? • Clause Type: declarative, interrogative, topicalization • Illocutionary Force: assertion, information request, seek confirmation (CSQ)‏ • Preceding Tone: lexical tone of syllable preceding ma • Utterance Length: in syllables • Utterance Duration: in milliseconds • Utterance Pitch Range: in bark

  10. Tone choice overview

  11. Tone choice, continued

  12. “Rhetorical Questions” Ex: wo bu shi mei qian ma I not be no money Q 'But I'm broke!' • syntactic or pragmatic cues of interrogativity combined with assertive or directive force 9/10 “rhetorical questions” realized with low boundary tone (L%)‏

  13. Other L% Questions • Distance from current talkA:jiu cong genben shang gaibian, cong ziji xiaoshihou de jiaoyu, cong zhexie haizi de jiaoyu ... jiu kaishi gaibian, danshi tai nan le“[We have to] start change from the roots, start from childhood education, start from the education of these children ... but it's too difficult.”B: m, quan shi jun- junguozhuyi neizhong ma“All militarism and that sort of thing?”A: na bu shi“No, not that.”

  14. What about H% declaratives? • Hedging?A: qishi wo ganjue Hangzhou bing bu shi xiang wo xiangxiang zhong de name haowan a“Actually I felt [the city of] Hangzhou really wasn't as fun as I would have imagined.”B: qishi Hangzhou ye man haowan de ma, fengjing ting hao de, dui ba“Actually Hangzhou is really rather fun, the scenery is rather good, right?”

  15. Tone Choice Summary • Mandarin follows universal tendency to pair L% with declaratives and H% with yes/no-questions • Exceptional pairings motivate noncanonical pragmatic readings and interactional stances • H% other-oriented, “checking” • L% distant, dissatisfied

  16. Ma Duration • ni yizhi kandao wei ma“Did you watch it to the end?” • Duration of ma quite variable

  17. Final lengthening

  18. Duration of final particle • Is duration of ma meaningful? • Normalized duration measure based on speech rate of utterancednorm = dma*(nsyls/ dutterance)*mean(dsyl) • Regression model with normalized duration of ma as response

  19. Duration of final particle • Major hypotheses • turn finality • longer in questions--involvement? • speaker characteristics--Gender, Age

  20. Model for final particle duration • Clause Type significant; Speaker Gender nearly significant, large effect • Men have shorter ma (~27 ms)‏ • Questions have longer ma (~41 ms)‏ • No effect for position in turn‏

  21. The context of ma lengthening • aha yi bai duo ji le! zhen shi yi ge hen chang de Hanguo pianr a… aiya wo shuo kanxialai ye xuyao yiding de naixing la… ni yizhi kandao wei ma“More than a hundred episodes! That really is a very long Korean TV series, wow I mean it requires some patience to keep watching -- did you watch it to the end?”

  22. Utterance-final particle pitch range • Pitch range also varies widely. Does it: • covary with utterance pitch range? • disambiguate questions? • show gender effects?

  23. Predictors of final particle pitch range

  24. Summary • Accent: lexical tone on atonic syllables a salient “nonstandard” feature • Gender: men use briefer, more level ma, women longer ma with more pitch movement • Why would there be a gender difference?

  25. Meanings, stances • Illocution • Information request: H% • Assertion: L% • Involvement, enthusiasm • H% declaratives, long ma, pitch movement • Questions also a (minimal) form of involvement? • Disapproval • L% Qs “I’m broke” and “Nationalism” • Petulant vs. skeptical

  26. Social variables • Gender • Displays of “adorable petulance” (sajiao; Farris 1995) and enthusiasm enhanced by intonational features • These affective displays are relatively gendered‏

  27. Conclusions • Boundary tones: is ma relatively high or low? • clause type and illocution • L%: declarative clause type or assertive force • H% signals need to respond? • ma Duration • clause type: longer in questions • gender: shorter for men • displays of interest and involvement • ma Pitch Range • utterance pitch range and ma duration • accent: less pitch range for standard speakers • gender: wider pitch range for women

  28. Further Questions • Is it just ma? • “commitment” • Most utterance-final particles index increased affect • What techniques do men use to do “enthusiasm”? • Utterance-wide effects

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