Perception of Corrective Focus in Xiangshan Wu Chinese

A previous production study found that in Xiangshan dialect, items under corrective focus show longer duration, raised pitch level, and optional and inconsistent sandhi changes. This follow-up study sets out to explore whether native speakers can identify focus using these cues, and if they do, which cues are more important. Results show that the gradient acoustic cues, i.e., mean F0 differences and duration ratio, serve as better acoustic cues for identification of corrective focus compared to phonological tone sandhi changes.