Investigating prosodic entrainment from global conversations to local turns and tones in Mandarin conversations

Zhihua Xia, Julia Hirschberg, Rivka Levitan

Abstract: Highlights•This is the first journal submission describing in considerable detail acoustic-prosodic entrainment (the tendency of speakers to speak like one another in successful conversations) in speakers of Mandarin Chinese.•Findings include the following o in Mandarin, global (over a whole conversation) and local (turn by turn) entrainment are quite different in terms of the features speakers entrain on.•Local entrainment is more prevalent than global.•Entrainment over tone units is the most prominent form of local entrainment in Mandarin.•Mandarin speakers also entrain globally and locally in terms of intensity (loudness).•Durational and F0 (fundamental frequency) entrainment is also more prevalent in local entrainment.•These findings are compared with our and our colleagues findings’ for Slovak and English.•We also propose additional and more detailed research for Mandarin Chinese entrainment.