Prosodic Realization of Rhetorical Structure in Chinese Discourse

The research reported in this paper is an acoustic experiment attempting to elucidate the relationship between prosodic variation and rhetorical structure in discourse. Based on Rhetorical Structure Theory, facets of discourse structure such as hierarchy, relation, and the relative importance of discourse segment were identified. Five speakers of standard Chinese were recorded reading ten paragraphs with two repetitions. Boundary pause duration, f0 max, f0 min, and pitch range of the segments were measured. It was found that speakers realized longer pauses at boundaries of higher hierarchy. Furthermore, compared with segments linked by nucleus-satellite relation, segments linked by multinuclear relation were found to have wider pre-boundary pitch range. Additionally, important segments were found to be articulated with wider pitch range than unimportant segments. These results suggest that rhetorical structure is reliably conveyed by prosodic parameters in standard Chinese.