ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we investigate the effects of contrastive focus on the f0, duration, and intensity patterns of disyllabic modifier-noun compounds and verb-noun phrases in Shanghai Chinese, in order to further our understanding of the prosodic encoding mechanism of contrastive focus in tonal languages and to shed some light on the relationship between focus encoding and prosodic structure in Shanghai Chinese. Results showed that modifier-noun compounds and verb-noun phrases form different prosodic structures (the prosodic word and the prosodic phrase respectively) and undertake left- and right-dominant sandhi respectively. Contrastive focus is prosodically encoded through the global adjustment of f0, duration, and intensity of the whole sentence. Furthermore, focus-induced f0 and intensity adjustment patterns are different between compounds and phrases. The f0 and intensity of both syllables in the compound word are enhanced together, regardless of the focus position, while in phrases, only the focused syllable is enhanced. Therefore, we propose that the focus encoding is mediated through prosodic structure in Shanghai Chinese. Last but not least, there are clear post-focus compression effects, as the f0, intensity, and duration of post-focus syllables are significantly reduced. However, the post-focus compression effect is also sensitive to prosodic structure and performs as a prosodic boundary marker in Shanghai Chinese.
