Pan Mandarin Tones and Break Indices

We are currently developing a set of ToBI framework conventions for Mandarin. Our intention is to start with coupled sub-conventions that are roughly accurate descriptions of the two major standard varieties, Putonghua and Guoyu, and then incrementally add more sub-conventions that can apply to other varieties, such as the various regional dialects of the Mandarin speaking area of China and contact varieties that are developing in places such as Hong Kong -- i.e., regions where Mandarin is being influenced by other dialects of Chinese or other languages.

We presented a paper on this development work at the satelite workshop on "Intonation: Models and ToBI Labeling" at ICPhS99. The written version of this paper will appear in the book that Sun-Ah Jun has edited from selected presentations at that workshop:

Peng, S., Chan, M. K. M., Tseng, C., Huang, T., Lee, O. J., and Beckman, M. E. (in press). Towards a Pan-Mandarin prosodic annotation system. To appear in S.-A. Jun, ed., Prosodic Models and Transcription: Towards Prosodic Typology. Oxford University Press.

Click here to get a preprint of the paper and the accompanying sound files.

We are currently organizing a focus group on Mandarin for the satelite workshop that Paul Warren is organizing on Intonation in Language Varieties -- AM Approaches to be held at ICPhS2003 in Barcelona on Sunday, 3 August 2003. If you would like to join this focus group, please contact Peggy Wong at:

pwong@ling.osu.edu

Back to the ToBI Framework Homepage.