ISCA Archive ICSLP 1990
ISCA Archive ICSLP 1990

Prosodic features determining the comprehension of syntactically ambiguous sentences in Mandarin Chinese

Yoshimasa Tsukuma, Junichi Azuma

This paper investigates the prosodic features that can disambiguate polysemous sentences in Mandarin Chinese and confirms the results of the acoustic investigation by means of a series of perceptual experiments using synthesized speech stimuli. Judging from the results of both the acoustic and perceptual experiments, it is concluded that a pause and stretched word duration before a syntactic boundary are the two primary prosodic cues to disambiguate polysemous sentences in Mandarin Chinese.