A study on the pitch realization of focus in Chinese

In this study, the effect of focus on the realization of pitch in Chinese utterance is analyzed, and it is found that, for the broad focused utterance, the pitch range of the first and the last prosodic words are comparatively large, while that in the middle is relatively small. When a word is on-focus, its top pitch will be greatly raised, resulting in expanded pitch range, but its bottom pitch is not significant affected. When there is a later narrow focus, the top pitch of the first prosodic word is lowered, and its bottom pitch is raised, resulting in compressed pitch range. However, the second prosodic word is basically not prominent in the broad focused condition, so the pitch is not significantly affected when it is in the pre-focal position.