Relation between focus and accent in Standard Chinese

The present study adopts the acoustic experiment to investigates the corresponding relations between focus and accent in Standard Chinese (Hereinafter, SC). The research deals with the question from three aspects: (i) focus scope vs. accent domain; (ii) numbers of focus vs. numbers of accents; (iii) focus without accent vs. accent without focus. Results have demonstrated that the focus scope and accent domain shows highly symmetry relation in the way that all the items within the focus scope contribute to the realization of accent. Specifically, the L and H tonal targets of each syllable are raised significantly. However, the focus and accent exhibits non-symmetry relation from the perspective of numbers, i.e., the number of accent is less than the number of focus, and, only the rightmost item can realize accent in multiple focus environment. Further, like English, SC exists the phenomenon that focus is not always signaled by accent and the accent is not always associated with focus.