2008/05/28

Ho, A. T. (1976) The acoustic variation of Mandarin tones. Phonetica, 33, 353-367.

Presentation: Angela

Summary: Sarah

This study aims to broadly explore the acoustic properties of Mandarin tones. Specifically, three factors were examined, including the effect of environments, vowels, and preceding consonants. Stimuli were designed accordingly and read by five Beijing Mandarin speakers. Results showed that sentence environments had impacts on the realization of the tonal contour, but not to the extent to distort them. Moreover, syllable duration and amplitude were more or less influenced. As for the effect of vowels, high vowels usually resulted in higher F₀ but shorter duration. Finally, it was found that prevocalic consonants indeed affected tonal contours. While voiced consonants uniformly lowered the F₀, the impact of aspiration was however less clearly shown.