THE EFFECT OF LEXICAL FREQUENCY ON TONE PRODUCTION

Yuan Zhao & Dan Jurafsky
Stanford University

ID 1164
[full paper]

Previous research has identified robust effects on segmental production of lexical factors like word frequency, predictability or neighborhood density. One question that remains unanswered is whether such lexical effects hold also at the suprasegmental level. This study investigates whether lexical factors such as usage frequency affect tone production in Cantonese. We recorded Cantonese monosyllabic words of high and low usage frequency, controlling for segmental factors. The results show that lexical factors do influence suprasegmental production. Words of the same tone but of different usage frequency differ significantly in pitch height. Low-frequency words are hyperarticulated and produced with relatively higher pitch. The overall tone space of low-frequency words is more expanded than that of their high-frequency counterparts.