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Durational adjustment in Cantonese focus marking of native and non-native speakers
Author(s)
Date Issued
2023
ISBN
9788090811423
Citation
Yang, Y. (2023). Durational adjustment in Cantonese focus marking of native and non-native speakers. In Skarnitzl, R., & Volín, J. (Eds.). Proceedings of the 20th international congress of phonetic sciences, prague 2023. 20th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Prague 2023, Prague Congress Center, Czech Republic (pp. 604-608).
Type
Conference Paper
Abstract
The speech production of non-native speakers usually differs from that of native speakers, but very few
investigations on the prosody of non-native speech have been conducted. Although duration has been
regarded as an important acoustic cue for focus marking in Cantonese, precisely how native
Cantonese speakers manipulate duration in different types of syllable structures remains to be explored.
This study aims to fill these research gaps by examining how native and non-native speakers of
Cantonese mark prosodic focus via durational adjustment. The native speakers demonstrated an
asymmetrical effect of focal lengthening in different types of syllable structures in Cantonese, and the
word-final nasals were expanded substantially. The non-native speakers revealed different patterns,
which was attributed to their failure to fully acquire Cantonese focus marking. Discussions about the
amount of focal lengthening in Cantonese and the acquisition and learnability of second language (L2)
prosody are provided.
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