The role of prosody in facilitating memory for discourse information in Mandarin Chinese: evidence from a delayed recall task

ABSTRACT Successful communication is not only about understanding what interlocutors say but also how they say it. It has been well established that speakers in a variety of languages utilize prosodic prominence (e.g., higher pitch, longer duration, and stronger intensity) to highlight important information, and listeners can effectively use these cues to achieve successful comprehension. Although increasing evidence on the role of prosody in language processing has been found in nontonal languages (e.g., Germanic languages) in recent years, less is known about tonal languages, despite differences in the phonetic implementation of prosodic focus between languages, such as pitch accenting in English versus pitch range expansion in Mandarin. To address this gap, the present study examines whether and how prosodic prominence influences memory for focused information and its contextual alternatives in Mandarin, using a delayed recall task with 64 participants. The results indicate that in Mandarin, prosodic prominence significantly facilitated the recall of focused words but had limited effects on the recall of focus alternatives. This study sheds light on how Mandarin listeners use prosodic cues to facilitate their native language comprehension and expands our knowledge of the role of prosody in tonal languages in general.