My DPhil thesis, supervised by Professor Aditi Lahiri, was about the intonational tunes in a tonal language — Tianjin Mandarin:
I have updated almost all analyses in the thesis for journal publications. I added analyses using fPCA, desicion tree/random forest, clustering, etc. to support the analysis I made in the thesis.
Related articles:
tone-intonation
Stacking and Unstacking Prosodies : The Production and Perception of Sentence Prosody in a Tonal Language
Cong Zhang
In Proceeding of 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 2019
Teasing apart lexical prosody and sentence prosody has been one of the most difficult tasks in the study of intonational tunes in tonal languages. Are different prosodic manifestations stacked, or are they an integrated whole? With evidence from production and perception data of the intonational yes/no question tune in Tianjin Mandarin at sentence level, this paper proposes that (1) lexical tonal alterations (a.k.a tone sandhi) are lexical-level prosody and do not belong to sentence-level tune; (2) pitch accents induced by information structure are “intra-tune” features, which are such sentence-level prosody features that do not cause sentence type change. Despite being sentence-level prosody features, they are not a part of the tune for intonational yes/no question.
@inproceedings{zhang2019stacking,author={Zhang, Cong},booktitle={Proceeding of 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences},year={2019},title={{Stacking and Unstacking Prosodies : The Production and Perception of Sentence Prosody in a Tonal Language}},keywords={intonation,tianjin mandarin,tone}}
Lexical tones and intonational tunes are both mainly realised through pitch modulation. What role does intonation play in a language which has a lexical tonal contrast? Can one separate ‘tone’ from ‘intonation’? If yes, how do lexical tones interact with intonational tunes? In order to answer these questions, this thesis investigates how tone and intonation interact during production and perception in Tianjin Mandarin, by means of examining the components of different intonational tunes under the Autosegmental-Metrical (AM) Framework (Pierrehumbert, 1980), and the cues native listeners use during the tune identification process. Chapter 1 – 3 are the introductory chapters: Chapter 1 introduces the topic of research, and sketches the three research goals for this thesis – the theoretical goal, the documentation goal, and the methodological goal; Chapter 2 addresses the theoretical foundation of this thesis – the AM theory; and Chapter 3 outlines the linguistic background of Tianjin Mandarin. Chapter 4 presents production studies of the tune of intonational Yes/No questions (IntQ) in Tianjin Mandarin. A total of six native Tianjin speakers were recorded for monosyllabic words in isolation (Mono(ISO)) and monosyllabic words as sentence prominence (Mono(SEN)), with statement tune and IntQ tune, respectively. The results show that when a monosyllabic word is produced in isolation, the IntQ tune has a raised register, and a floating H% boundary tone at the end of the intonational phrase. When a monosyllabic word is in sentence prominence position, the IntQ tune also has a raised register, a floating H% boundary tone, as well as a H* pitch accent coming from the focus and a post-focus compression. The IntQ tune is: [H* pitch accent + (post-focus compression) + floating H̥% boundary tone] higher register. To further investigate how the IntQ tune is represented, three perception experiments were conducted on monosyllabic words in isolation, monosyllabic words as sentence prominence, and sentences with monosyllabic words as prominence in Chapter 5. A total of 28 native Tianjin Mandarin speakers participated in the experiments. They were asked to identify the tunes (yes-no question or statement) of the audio stimuli. The accuracy of their responses and reaction time together show that they strongly prefer the H-Rising lexical tone for IntQs, and L-Falling lexical tone for statements, which indicate that they look for the low register information during the identification of statements, and a H boundary tone for the IntQ tune. Another important tune, chanted call (CC) tune, was also studied to further investigate the possibilities of intonational tunes in a tonal language in Chapter 6. Six native speakers’ production of monosyllabic words and disyllabic words were recorded. The results show that there is a L% boundary tone at the end of the intonational phrase, regardless of the lexical tones. Different from the IntQ data, the L% boundary tone is phonetically manifested and overrode the lexical tone contours. A H* pitch accent was found to be associated with the H of each lexical tone. Lengthening was also found in the CC tune. The CC tune in Tianjin Mandarin can be represented as follows: [[H*]sustained]higher register + L%.
@phdthesis{zhang2018dphil,author={Zhang, Cong},keywords={Doctoral thesis},school={Doctoral thesis: University of Oxford},title={{Tianjin Mandarin Tones and Tunes}},year={2018}}
Speech Prosody
Chanted Call Tune in Tianjin Mandarin: Disyllabic Calls
Cong Zhang
In 9th International Conference on Speech Prosody 2018, 2018
This paper examines the chanted call tune in Tianjin Mandarin in order to investigate the possibilities of intonational components, i.e. pitch accents, boundary tones, etc., in a tonal language. Six native Tianjin speakers’ production of disyllabic names and kinship terms were recorded. The speech materials were composed of a set of left-prominent disyllabic names and a set of right-prominent disyllabic names. The results show that there is a L% boundary tone at the end of the intonational phrase, regardless of the lexical tones. Different from the IntQ data, the L% boundary tone is phonetically manifested and overrode the lexical tone contours. A H* pitch accent was found to be associated with the H of each lexical tone. Lengthening was also found in the CC tune. The CC tune in Tianjin Mandarin can be represented as follows: [[H*]sustained]higher register + L%.
@inproceedings{zhang2018chanted,author={Zhang, Cong},title={{Chanted Call Tune in Tianjin Mandarin: Disyllabic Calls}},year={2018},booktitle={9th International Conference on Speech Prosody 2018},doi={10.21437/SpeechProsody.2018-106},pages={522--526},publisher={ISCA}}
Related talks:
tone-intonation
Procedures of Investigating Intonation Phonology in a Tonal Language.
Cong Zhang
6th Conference on Language Documentation and Linguistic Theory London, UK [online], 16-18 dec 2021
A preliminary view for studying intonation in tonal langauges.
@conference{zhang2021procedures-c,author={Zhang, Cong},title={Procedures of Investigating Intonation Phonology in a Tonal Language.},booktitle={6th Conference on Language Documentation and Linguistic Theory},year={2021},category={oral},month={16-18 Dec},location={London, UK [online]}}
tone-intonation
Stacking and Unstacking Prosodies: The Production and Perception of Sentence Prosody in a Tonal Language.
Cong Zhang
19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS) Melbourne, Australia, 5-9 aug 2019
Teasing apart lexical prosody and sentence prosody has been one of the most difficult tasks in the study of intonational tunes in tonal languages. Are different prosodic manifestations stacked, or are they an integrated whole? With evidence from production and perception data of the intonational yes/no question tune in Tianjin Mandarin at sentence level, this paper proposes that (1) lexical tonal alterations (a.k.a tone sandhi) are lexical-level prosody and do not belong to sentence-level tune; (2) pitch accents induced by information structure are “intra-tune” features, which are such sentence-level prosody features that do not cause sentence type change. Despite being sentence-level prosody features, they are not a part of the tune for intonational yes/no question.
@conference{zhang2019stacking-c,author={Zhang, Cong},title={Stacking and Unstacking Prosodies: The Production and Perception of Sentence Prosody in a Tonal Language.},booktitle={19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS)},year={2019},category={oral},month={5-9 Aug},location={Melbourne, Australia}}
tone-intonation
Chanted Call Tune in Tianjin Mandarin: Disyllabic Calls.
Cong Zhang
Speech Prosody 2018 Poznań, Poland, 13-16 jun 2018
This paper examines the chanted call tune in Tianjin Mandarin in order to investigate the possibilities of intonational components, i.e. pitch accents, boundary tones, etc., in a tonal language. Six native Tianjin speakers’ production of disyllabic names and kinship terms were recorded. The speech materials were composed of a set of left-prominent disyllabic names and a set of right-prominent disyllabic names. The results show that there is a L% boundary tone at the end of the intonational phrase, regardless of the lexical tones. Different from the IntQ data, the L% boundary tone is phonetically manifested and overrode the lexical tone contours. A H* pitch accent was found to be associated with the H of each lexical tone. Lengthening was also found in the CC tune. The CC tune in Tianjin Mandarin can be represented as follows: [[H*]sustained]higher register + L%.
@conference{zhang2017perception-c,author={Zhang, Cong},title={Perception of Interrogative Tunes in Tianjin Mandarin.},booktitle={Linguistics Association of Great Britain Annual Meeting 2017},year={2017},category={oral},month={4-7 Sep},location={University of Kent, UK}}
tone-intonation
Identifying Interrogative Tunes in Tianjin Mandarin.
Cong Zhang
Processing Prosody Across Languages, Varieties, and Nativeness University of Tubingen, Germany, 31 aug-1 sep 2017
@conference{zhang2017identifying-c,author={Zhang, Cong},title={Identifying Interrogative Tunes in Tianjin Mandarin.},booktitle={Processing Prosody Across Languages, Varieties, and Nativeness},year={2017},category={oral},month={31 Aug-1 Sep},location={University of Tubingen, Germany}}
@conference{zhang2017tianjin-c,author={Zhang, Cong},title={Tianjin Mandarin Tunes: Production and Perception Data [Best Poster Presentation Award].},booktitle={Phonetics and Phonology in Europe 2017},year={2017},month={12-14 Jun},location={Cologne, Germany}}
@conference{zhang2016tones-c,author={Zhang, Cong},title={Tones and Tunes in Tianjin Mandarin [Best Student Presentation Award].},booktitle={Tones and Intonation in Europe 2016},year={2016},category={oral},month={1-3 Sep},location={University of Kent, UK}}