Acoustic study of non-interrogative usages of the interrogative pronoun in Mandarin

Abstract

In Mandarin Chinese, the interrogative pronoun “shen2me0” not only can be used to express interrogation, but also has multiple non-interrogative usages. In sentences with same syntactic structure, by applying different intonations, this wh-word can convey various meanings. However, due to the lack of grammatical markers, it could be a complex problem for Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR). Therefore, this study chose to investigate the acoustic features of these usages of “shen2me0”. Through two experiments, this present compared the acoustic features including pitch contours, sentence stress, duration, pitch range, boundary tone of sentence and the wh-word of the interrogative, empty reference, rhetorical, and referential substitution usages in same sentences under different contexts. Also, the use of modal particles at the end of the sentences was considered. The results showed that interrogative usage had moderate pitch fluctuation and the use of modal particle would influence how people pronounced the wh-word. In empty reference usage, “shen2me0” had a neutral nature as a placeholder rather than a focus, and thus the sentence showed a flat pitch curve. Rhetorical usage had dynamic pitch changes, especially at the word “hai2”, to express strong emotion. Referential substitution usage had a flatter pitch curve at the beginning, which rose higher at the end, with prolonged pronunciation of “me0”. Moreover, this study also discussed about meaning for ASR and the improvements in further study.