Perception of prosodic structure of Chinese sentence

The perceptual representation of the prosodic structure of Chinese sentences was constructed statistically by using the method of multidimensional scaling analysis on the basis of the result of a discrimination experiment, in which listeners were asked to compare perceptual distances between two adjacent syllables in each of six sentences. Listeners’ ability to resolve levels of prosodic hierarchy and the relationship between the prosodic and syntactic structures were discussed in relation to perceptual representations.