The Prosodic Realization of Information Structure for Chinese Discourse Production by Depression Patients

Abstract

In this paper, we present a study on the phonetic realization of information structure for production of Chinese reading text by depression patients in comparison with normal people. 16 depression patients and 4 normal people were analyzed in this paper. RefLex was selected as the annotation scheme, which differentiates information structure on the lexical and referential levels. Duration and pitch range were selected as the main phonetic parameters. The main findings are as follows. Depression patients can distinguish new, given and accessible information through duration and pitch range. When the degree of information activation increases, patients tend to expand the duration and pitch range on both levels. Further, the phonetic distinction between depression patients and normal people mainly emerges in term of pitch range.