Prosodic disambiguation by Chinese EFL learners in a cooperative game task Yuanyuan Zhang 1 , Hongwei Ding 1* , Peter Zelchenko 2 , Xin Cui 1 , Yi Lin 1 , Yuqing Zhan 1 , Hui Zhang 1 1 Institute of Cross-Linguistic Processing and Cognition, School of Foreign Languages, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China 2 School of Media and Design, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China yyuan.zhang@sjtu.edu.cn, hwding@sjtu.edu.cn Abstract In this study, a game-based production experiment was adopted to examine the prosodic realization of syntactically ambiguous sentences by Chinese learners of English as a foreign language (EFL hereafter). 20 Chinese undergraduates and 10 native speakers of American English participated in this experiment. Subjects followed the guides in pictures and instructed listeners to move objects on the computer screen by using the critical instructions with prepositional attachment sentences (PP-attachment hereafter). In all, 10 pairs of ambiguous PP-attachment sentences that might refer to one situation or another were adopted. It was found that both the native speakers and Chinese EFL learners used pre-boundary lengthening and pause to distinguish the alternative meanings of the ambiguous PP-attachment sentences. While native speakers also showed domain-initial strengthening which may be related to the length of previous phrase, and greater pre- boundary lengthening and longer pause than the learners. In addition, native speakers displayed pitch reset at the prosodic boundary, indicating a pitch declination of the utterances. However, the learners might not consistently use pitch reset at the prosodic boundary. Index Terms: prosody, prosodic boundary, syntactic ambiguity, English learners 1. Introduction Prosody plays a crucial role in spoken language comprehension. One important function of prosody is to segment the utterances into smaller phrases. Prosodic phrasing is not isomorphic to syntactic phrasing, rather, it is a reflection of the syntactic structure of the utterance [1]. In the study of the effect of prosodic phrasing on syntactic structure, prosodic disambiguation (i.e., using prosody to resolve syntactic ambiguity) has been of particular interest [2]. Some syntactic ambiguities can be resolved by the placement of prosodic boundaries, especially for bracketing ambiguities [3]. For example, the PP-attachment sentence “Tap the frog with the flower” may have two interpretations depending on the situation: that is, to use the flower to tap the frog, or to tap the frog that has a flower [4]. The intended meaning of this ambiguity can be distinguished by bracketing the sentence in different ways. Prosodic disambiguation has been widely studied in speech production and perception. It has been shown that both speakers and listeners can use prosodic cues to resolve syntactic ambiguity [4–17]. The major acoustic correlates of prosodic phrasing are duration, fundamental frequency (F0), and intensity, but intensity has been less often studied as a signal for prosodic boundaries. According to [18], pre- boundary lengthening, pause insertion, and domain-initial strengthening are the main durational cues relating to prosodic phrasing. In addition, boundary tone, pitch reset, and voice quality changes at the end of the prosodic domain also correlate with prosodic boundaries. In the study of the role of prosody in sentence processing and language comprehension, prosodic phrasing has also been investigated in second language research. In a study of early Spanish-English bilinguals carried out by [19], it was shown that the bilinguals adopted a greater duration and a less extreme pitch movement compared to the monolingual. In [20], it was found that French-English learners could use prosodic information for interpretation, but their preference for prosodic phrasing was associated with their French proficiency. English-German learners and German-English learners were found not to fully transfer prosodic cues to disambiguate from first language to second language, which was due to their different use of pitch information [21]. In a study of Taiwanese English learners’ prosodic disambiguation, it was demonstrated that the advanced English learners employed more distinguishable pause duration difference than the native speakers, while the limited learners could not pause reliably to disambiguate [22]. Prosodic disambiguation by Chinese learners of English was investigated in [23], finding that the learners used pauses more often to disambiguate, and that their intended meaning could not be effectively perceived by the native speakers. It was shown that the prosody of the learners’ native language can influence the second language. The above studies also suggest that the learners’ use of prosody to disambiguate in speech production is related to their language experience, and that it may be influenced by their native language. The use of prosody in Chinese has been examined in speech production and perception. It was demonstrated in [24] and [25] that pause insertion, F0 lowering, intensity reduction, pre-boundary lengthening, and laryngealization at the prosodic boundary were the acoustic correlates to prosodic disambiguation. It has been proposed that pause is the primary prosodic cue and pre-boundary lengthening is less important. A comparison between the prosodic cues used in English and Chinese was conducted in [26], finding that both groups of speakers utilized pause insertion, pre-boundary lengthening and pitch changes to signal prosodic boundary, but their use of pitch changes differed. It has been proposed that pitch slope in English is more effective, while in Chinese pitch reset is more effective. English is an intonation language, while Chinese is a tonal language, in which pitch is used to distinguish lexical items at the word level, and signal variations in intonation at the sentence level [26]. In addition, it was proposed that the prosodic cues indicating prosodic boundaries may be language *Corresponding author 9th International Conference on Speech Prosody 2018 13-16 June 2018, Poznań, Poland 979 10.21437/SpeechProsody.2018-198