The effects of prosodic phrase boundary on the pitch lowering of downstep and focus

The effects of prosodic phrase (PP) boundary on the pitch lowering of downstep and focus, as well as the domains of them were investigated in Chinese Putonghna, by using designed sentences which consist of two prosodic phrases (i.e., PP1, PP2). The results showed that:(1) The PP boundary blocked the downstep effect in the preceding phrase, indicating that PP is the domain of downstep. (2) The post-focus F0 lowering effect in PP1 spread across the PP boundary and lower the F0 contour of PP2. If there is also a downstep effect in PP2, the postboundary compression effect of the prior focus will accumulate with the downstep, producing further lowered contour. Therefore, the domain of focus is an intonational phrase (IP). (3) When there is one contrastive focus in each phrase, the outstanding pitch reset elicited by the second focus will block the F0 lowering effect of PP1 onto PP2, and the two loci are realized independently.