Persian Sentence Stress Production by Mandarin Chinese Speakers

This study examined the phonetic characteristics of Persian sentence stress produced by native Mandarin Chinese speakers. We compared the phonetic correlates of sentence stress, namely fundamental frequency (F0), vowel duration, and vowel intensity in the production of 8 Mandarin Chinese speakers and 8 native Persian speakers. Results indicated that Mandarin Chinese speakers of Persian could differentiate stressed and unstressed words in Persian sentences based on F0, duration, and intensity. However, the two groups of speakers differed as to the extent to which they varied the acoustic parameters to signal sentence-level prominence. In particular, Mandarin Chinese speakers produced stressed words in Persian sentences with a significantly higher F0 and shorter vowel duration compared to native Persian speakers. It is argued that these differences may best be accounted for as prosodic interference from Mandarin Chinese in the production of sentence stress in L2 Persian.