Production and Perception of Focus in L2 Mandarin of Qiang Speakers

The present study investigated production and perception of focus in L2 Mandarin of Qiang speakers. Three target sentences were uttered under four focus conditions, i.e., initial, medial, final and neutral focus by 10 Qiang-Mandarin speakers. Systematic acoustic analysis showed that: (1) In Qiang-Mandarin, on-focus words exhibit significant F0 rising, intensity increasing and duration lengthening. There is no Post-focus Compression (PFC). The duration of pre-focus and post-focus words remains largely intact. (2) The perception of focus in Qiang-Mandarin is with relatively low accuracy, the average hitting rate is 28.1%, only slightly higher than chance. The average correct identification of initial and medial focus is 34.4%, which is higher than final focus (26%). It indicates that PFC is a very effective cue in focus perception.