This study investigates the phonetic realization of contrastive focus on disyllabic words in Shanghainese. Speakers produced disyllabic target words in three focus conditions: without contrastive focus (broad focus), contrastive focus on the first syllable, and contrastive focus on the second syllable. Results show that contrastive focus in Shanghainese is optionally realized. Among speakers who realize contrastive focus, two strategies are found, but they both involve changes in phrasing, which in turn lead to adjustments of f0, duration, and intensity. Focus tends to block tone sandhi application, so that the focused syllable does not form tone sandhi domain with either the preceding or following syllables. The effect of focus is much bigger on the second syllable of the disyllabic word.
Cite as: Tian, J., Kuang, J. (2020) The phonetic realization of contrastive focus in Shanghainese. Proc. Speech Prosody 2020, 265-269, doi: 10.21437/SpeechProsody.2020-54
@inproceedings{tian20_speechprosody,
author={Jia Tian and Jianjing Kuang},
title={{The phonetic realization of contrastive focus in Shanghainese}},
year=2020,
booktitle={Proc. Speech Prosody 2020},
pages={265--269},
doi={10.21437/SpeechProsody.2020-54}
}