Durational patterning at syntactic and discourse boundaries in Mandarin spontaneous speech

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Phonetics
• Sociolinguistics

Background:

• Discourse boundaries are crucial for organizing spoken language.
• Durational cues like syllable duration and pauses play a role in signaling these boundaries.
• Mandarin dialects may exhibit variations in using these cues.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the use of durational cues (syllable duration, pause duration, syllable onset intervals) at discourse boundaries in Taiwan and Mainland Mandarin.
• To compare how these cues signal discourse disjuncture levels and hierarchy across the two dialects.

Main Methods:

• Elicited speech data from 18 participants describing "The Pear Story" film.
• Transcription, labeling, and segmentation of speech into clauses.
• Analysis of durational cues and discourse boundary indices to determine disjuncture levels.

Main Results:

• Syllable lengthening occurred at boundaries, affecting final and penultimate syllables.
• Pauses were robust but optional boundary indicators; Taiwan Mandarin preferred unfilled pauses.
• Discourse hierarchy correlated with pauses and syllable onset intervals (SOIs), with pauses being the primary contributor.
• Taiwan Mandarin utilized both syllable and pause duration, unlike Mainland Mandarin which relied solely on pauses, suggesting a rhythm-related dialectal difference.

Conclusions:

• Pause usage for discourse demarcation is language-specific, but its role in encoding discourse hierarchy is more universal.
• Taiwan Mandarin strategically manipulates syllable and pause duration to emphasize pause function in signaling discourse hierarchy.
• Dialectal differences in durational cue usage highlight the intricate relationship between phonetics, prosody, and discourse structure.