Ambiguities in Chinese and Italian and their resolution by prosody.

Tsai, Ya Ching.
Thesis submitted in: December 2008.
Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2009.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 157-160).
s in English and Chinese; includes Chinese characters.
Acknowledgement --- p.i
p.ii
摘要 --- p.iii
Table of contents --- p.iv
Chapter 1. --- Introduction --- p.1
Chapter 1.1 --- Objective --- p.1
Chapter 1.2 --- Ambiguity detection --- p.3
Chapter 1.3 --- Definition of ambiguity --- p.3
Chapter 1.3.1 --- Lexical ambiguity --- p.4
Chapter 1.3.2 --- Structural ambiguity --- p.5
Chapter 1.4 --- Structure of the thesis --- p.8
Chapter 2. --- Literature Review --- p.9
Chapter 2.1 --- Prosodic phonology --- p.9
Chapter 2.1.1 --- Prosodic hierarchy --- p.9
Chapter 2.1.1.1 --- "Syllable, foot and phonological word" --- p.10
Chapter 2.1.1.2 --- Clitics --- p.13
Chapter 2.1.1.3 --- Clitic group --- p.16
Chapter 2.1.1.4 --- Phonological phrase --- p.19
Chapter 2.1.1.5 --- Intonational phrase --- p.26
Chapter 2.1.2 --- Organization of prosodic structure --- p.27
Chapter 2.1.2.1 --- Stress clash --- p.28
Chapter 2.1.2.2 --- Eurhythmic rule --- p.29
Chapter 2.1.2.3 --- Stress-timing vs. syllable-timing --- p.31
Chapter 2.1.3 --- Syntax and phonology interaction --- p.33
Chapter 2.2 --- Prosodic disambiguation --- p.35
Chapter 2.2.1 --- Previous studies and preliminary findings --- p.35
Chapter 2.2.2 --- Disambiguation strategies --- p.36
Chapter 2.2.2.1 --- Intonational phrasing --- p.37
Chapter 2.1.2.2 --- Accent placement --- p.38
Chapter 2.2.2.3 --- Pause insertion and lengthening --- p.40
Chapter 2.2.2.4 --- Pitch reset --- p.41
Chapter 2.2.3 --- Examples of prosodic disambiguation devices in Italian --- p.42
Chapter 2.2.4 --- Examples of prosodic disambiguation devices in Chinese --- p.45
Chapter 2.2.5 --- Different approaches in accounting for disambiguation --- p.48
Chapter 2.2.5.1 --- Syntactic approach --- p.51
Chapter 2.2.5.2 --- Prosodic approach --- p.52
Chapter 3. --- Methodology --- p.55
Chapter 3.1 --- ToBI Annotation System --- p.55
Chapter 3.1.1 --- ToBI for Italian --- p.57
Chapter 3.1.2 --- ToBI for Mandarin --- p.58
Chapter 3.2 --- Assumptions and research questions --- p.60
Chapter 3.3 --- Production experiment --- p.62
Chapter 3.3.1 --- Chinese --- p.64
Chapter 3.3.1.1 --- Experiment procedure --- p.65
Chapter 3.3.1.2 --- A preview of the various syntactic ambiguities --- p.66
Chapter 3.3.1.2.1 --- Pro-drop ambiguity --- p.70
Chapter 3.3.1.2.2 --- Polysemous de --- p.73
Chapter 3.3.1.2.3 --- Modifier grouping ambiguity --- p.76
Chapter 3.3.1.2.4 --- Attachment ambiguity --- p.77
Chapter 3.3.1.3 --- The role of intonational phrasing in prosodic disambiguation --- p.78
Chapter 3.3.2 --- Italian --- p.81
Chapter 3.3.2.1 --- Experiment procedure --- p.82
Chapter 3.3.2.2 --- A preview of the various syntactic ambiguities --- p.85
Chapter 3.3.2.2.1 --- Pro-drop ambiguity --- p.86
Chapter 3.3.2.2.2 --- Modifier grouping ambiguity --- p.90
Chapter 3.3.2.2.3 --- Attachment ambiguity --- p.91
Chapter 3.3.2.2.4 --- Relative clause ambiguity --- p.94
Chapter 3.3.2.2.5 --- Homographic ambiguity --- p.96
Chapter 3.3.2.3 --- Salience of accent placement --- p.98
Chapter 3.3.2.4 --- Universality of semantic ambiguity --- p.100
Chapter 3.4 --- Perception experiment --- p.101
Chapter 3.4.1 --- Experiment procedure --- p.102
Chapter 3.4.2 --- Discussion --- p.104
Chapter 3.4.2.1 --- Better prediction by the prosodic approach --- p.106
Chapter 3.4.2.2 --- The preferred reading effect --- p.106
Chapter 3.4.2.3 --- Peculiarity of two toneless suffixes and how it is reflected in prosody --- p.110
Chapter 3.4.2.4 --- Parenthetical expressions as an intonational phrase? --- p.112
Chapter 3.5 --- General discussion --- p.114
Chapter 4. --- Conclusion --- p.119
Chapter 4.1 --- Summary --- p.119
Chapter 4.2 --- Significance --- p.127
Chapter 4.3 --- Limitations and future perspectives --- p.127
Appendices
Appendix I --- p.129
Appendix II --- p.131
Appendix III --- p.143
Appendix IV --- p.145
Appendix V --- p.153
Appendix VI --- p.154
Appendix VII --- p.156
Bibliography --- p.157
List of Figures
Figure 2.1 Pitch reset --- p.42
Figure 2.2 Major intonation group --- p.42
"Figure 3.1 ToBI transcription of the English sentence If he can, then there´ةs no argument about it" --- p.57
"Figure 3.2 ToBIt transcription of the Italian sentence No, no, niente. Disse. Un lieve capogiro" --- p.58
Figure 3.3 M一ToBI transcription of the Mandarin sentence Weili mailarou --- p.59
Figure 3.4 The wave form of Speaker T reading (2a) from Appendix III --- p.83
Figure 3.5 Annotation example of Speaker T reading (2a) from Appendix III --- p.83
Figure 3.6 Percentage of correct responses according to ambiguity types --- p.110
List of Tables
Table 2.1 Relations between the syntactic and prosodic structures of ambiguous sentences & percentage of responses corresponding to intended meaning of ambiguous sentences --- p.53
Table 2.2 Italian examples of different types of ambiguous sentences --- p.54
Table 3.1 Chinese ambiguity based on Nespor and Vogel´ةs ten relation types --- p.64
Table 3.2 Performance of the Chinese informants at real or potential I boundaries --- p.68
Table 3.3 Performance of the Italian informants at intermediate and intonational phrase boundaries --- p.84
Table 3.4 Percentage of responses corresponding to intended meaning --- p.105
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