Intonational Prominence of "SHI...(DE)" Construction in Standard Chinese

The present study mainly deals with the phonetic realization of the intonational prominence in the shi...(de) construction in standard Chinese. Results of acoustic and perceptual experiments demonstrate that the prominence placement bears corresponding relationship with the focused constituents marked by shi...(de) structure, specifically, the appearance of intonational prominence is symbolized by the focus marker shi. The phonetic realization of the intonational prominence lies in the expansion of the pitch range of the focus-bearing constituent and the compression of the pitch registers of the successive syllables.