Cao Siyi, Xu Yizhong, Zhou Tongquan, Wu Anqi
School of Foreign Languages, Southeast University, Nanjing, China.
Department of Chinese Bilingual Studies, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR, China.
Front Psychol. 2024 Feb 27;15:1322482. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1322482. eCollection 2024.
Echo questions serve two pragmatic functions (recapitulatory and explicatory) and are subdivided into two types (yes-no echo question and wh-echo question) in verbal communication. Yet to date, most relevant studies have been conducted in European languages like English and Spanish. It remains unknown whether the different functions of echo questions can be conveyed via prosody in spoken Chinese. Additionally, no comparison was made on the diversified algorithmic models in predicting functions by the prosodity of Chinese echo questions, a novel linguistic cognition in nature. This motivated us to use different acoustic cues to predict different pragmatic functions of Chinese echo questions by virtue of acoustic experiment and data modeling. The results showed that for yes-no echo question, explicatory function exhibited higher pitch and intensity patterns than recapitulatory function whereas for wh-echo question, recapitulatory function demonstrated higher pitch and intensity patterns than explicatory function. With regard to data modeling, the algorithm Support Vector Machine (SVM) relative to Random Forest (RF) and Logistic Regression (LR) performed better when predicting different functions using prosodic cues in both yes-no and wh-echo questions. This study from a digitized perspective adds evidence to the cognition of echo questions' functions on a prosodic basis.
回声问句在言语交际中具有两种语用功能（ recapitulatory和explicatory），并细分为两种类型（是非回声问句和特殊疑问回声问句）。然而，迄今为止，大多数相关研究都是以英语和西班牙语等欧洲语言进行的。目前尚不清楚回声问句的不同功能是否可以通过汉语口语中的韵律来传达。此外，对于汉语回声问句韵律预测功能的多种算法模型，这是一种全新的语言认知，尚未进行比较。这促使我们通过声学实验和数据建模，利用不同的声学线索来预测汉语回声问句的不同语用功能。结果表明，对于是非回声问句，explicatory功能比recapitulatory功能表现出更高的音高和强度模式；而对于特殊疑问回声问句，recapitulatory功能比explicatory功能表现出更高的音高和强度模式。在数据建模方面，相对于随机森林（RF）和逻辑回归（LR），支持向量机（SVM）算法在使用韵律线索预测是非回声问句和特殊疑问回声问句的不同功能时表现更好。这项从数字化角度进行的研究为基于韵律的回声问句功能认知提供了证据。
