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Prosodic marking of topic constructions in Mandarin Chinese

Chunsheng Yang, The Ohio State University

This study examines the prosodic marking of topic constructions in Mandarin Chinese. The findings suggest that, even though on the surface there are prosodic markings that differentiate topics from comments, the difference is the product of the prosodic phrasing, coupled with the declination and final lowering, in that a topic construction is usually decomposed into to two prosodic constituents. This study highlights the importance of taking into consideration prosodic hierarchy in prosodic studies.