An exploratory study of prosodic variation across pragmatic functions of Mandarin apology expressions

This exploratory corpus study examines prosodic variation across pragmatic functions of Mandarin apology expressions in naturally occurring telephone conversations. Although previous research has extensively examined the semantic and pragmatic properties of apologies, systematic acoustic evidence from natural Mandarin interaction remains limited. The study analyzes 79 target utterances containing bù hǎo yì si or duì bù qǐ, which were classified into five pragmatic-function categories through conversation analysis. Mean F0, duration, and mean intensity were extracted using Praat and compared using non-parametric statistical tests. Across the five categories, duration showed a significant overall difference, with the clearest corrected pairwise difference occurring between factual apology and relationship-maintenance functions. Mean F0 did not yield a stable pattern across the five categories after multiple-comparison correction, although a significant difference was observed in the broader comparison between apologetic and non-apologetic functions. Intensity did not show statistically significant differences. A supplementary descriptive analysis restricted to bù hǎo yì si was conducted to examine the potential contribution of lexical form to these patterns. The findings provide exploratory evidence that prosodic realization is associated with pragmatic-function differences in natural Mandarin interaction, while also highlighting the need for larger, better-balanced corpora and speaker-normalized pitch measures in future research.