Xu, C. X. & Xu, Y. (2003). Effects of consonant aspiration on Mandarin tones. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 33, 165–181.
Presentation: Hsiao-chien
Summary: Belinda
This study aims to explore the effect of aspiration on the following F0 of Mandarin tones, and the source of it. Previous studies have shown that aspiration of consonants affects the F0 of adjacent vowels. However, the patterns are not consistent. Hombert (1975) found that aspirated stops give rise to a higher F0 in many languages, while Gandour (1974) and Howie (1974) found the opposite trend. The authors conducted two experiments. They used sounds that are distinguished only by aspiration, for example, /tha/ and /ta/, and put them in first and second positions in carrier sentences. Results showed that F0 values were higher in /ta/ than in /tha/, which conformed to the aerodynamic hypothesis. As for the interaction effect, they found that F0 onsets were higher for /ta/ than for /tha/ in high and rising tones, which explains the assimilatory carryover effect. The interaction of consonant aspiration with the following tonal context on the onset F0 of a syllable showed an dissimilatory anticipatory effect, in which the F0 is higher before a low tone. What has been confirmed in the study is that the effect of consonant aspiration on the following F0 is significant, and the effect is greater for the rising and low tones than for the high and falling tones. Moreover, the author proposed that lower F0 onset in /tha/ than in /ta/ should be mainly attributable to the aerodynamic effect. The authors proposed that there is an underlying pitch target for each tone since the F0 curves of /tha/ and /ta/ always converge at the end of the syllable. Besides, they also confirmed that the aspiration effect on F0 superimposes on the local F0 variations at the vowel onset resulting from the contextual tonal variations.
