Contraction and Backgrounding in Taiwan Mandarin

Though the average speaker is often not very aware of it, phonetic contraction is a widespread phenomenon in Taiwan Mandarin; for example, ma3shang4 ` immediately' is typically realized as [m.....] or [m......] in relaxed conversational speech. The primary function of contracted forms is to background less important information, such as function words, adverbial modification, or the repeated part of reduplicated forms, thus helping the listener identify and focus on the highlighted or more important parts of the message. Due to the topic-comment structure of Chinese, in which the most important and relevant information comes last, contraction normally is not utterance-final except in the case of stable, established forms which contain a prominent, non-reduced syllable, or of parenthetical forms added as afterthoughts. Use of contracted forms varies according to the register of the discourse, the class and age of the interlocutors, personal speech habits, and emotional involvement in the subject matter. The rich system of contraction in Taiwan Mandarin suggests that it is a mixed system as regards syllable vs. stress timing, depending on the style and purpose of the discourse.