Abstract
Chinese speakers produced twelve yes/no questions in English as well as in Chinese, and English speakers produced the same in English. Compared to the native English speakers, the Chinese speakers tended to use a flatter intonation in their English and showed smaller fluctuations of pitch. This can be explained by first language interference: the flatter intonation was influenced by the final character “ma” at the end of Chinese yes/no questions and the smaller pitch fluctuations in general are due to the fact that Chinese intonation is restricted by lexical tone.
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Guo, Q., Wang, H., van de Weijer, J. (2021). A Comparative Study of Yes/No Question Intonation in Chinese and English Speakers. In: Tavana, M., Nedjah, N., Alhajj, R. (eds) Emerging Trends in Intelligent and Interactive Systems and Applications. IISA 2020. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 1304. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63784-2_38
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