The tonal phonology of mandarin

Yip, Moira

doi:10.3406/clao.1980.1072

Cited by 95 publications

(69 citation statements)

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“…Lin and Yan, 1980]. The contextual dependency of the neutral-tone F 0 contour and the fact that most neutral-tone morphemes have full-tone alternates have led to the general consensus that there are no phonological specifications for the neutral tone (however, see Yip [1980] who posits that the neutral tone is specified for [-upper] register and Lin [2001] who posits a low tone for the neutral tone).…”

Section: The Neutral Tone In Standard Chinesementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Yip [1980] proposed that the F 0 contour of the neutral tone is realized by tonal spreading from the preceding syllable. Shen [1992] adopted this view and proposed further that the ending component of the preceding tone was the neutral tone target.…”

Section: The Neutral Tone In Standard Chinesementioning

confidence: 99%

“…That is, the adjacent full tones are first realized as F 0 targets, and the neutral tone either acquires (or further specifies) a target from the spreading of the preceding tone [Yip, 1980;Wang, 1997], or its F 0 value is obtained simply via interpolation between the surface targets of the preceding full lexical tone and that of the following tone, which could be the following full lexical tone [Shih, 1987] or a postlexical prosodic word boundary tone [Li, 2003].…”

Section: The Neutral Tone In Standard Chinesementioning

confidence: 99%

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Production of Weak Elements in Speech – Evidence from F₀ Patterns of Neutral Tone in Standard Chinese

2006

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Many weak elements in speech, such as schwa in English and neutral tone in Standard Chinese, are commonly assumed to be unspecified or underspecified phonologically. The surface phonetic values of these elements are assumed to derive from interpolation between the adjacent phonologically specified elements or from the spreading of the contextual phonological features. In the present study, we re-evaluate this view by investigating detailed F0 contours of neutral-tone syllables in Standard Chinese, which are widely accepted as toneless underlyingly. We recorded sentences containing 0-3 consecutive neutral-tone syllables at two speaking rates with two focus conditions. Results of the experiment indicate that neutral-tone syllables do have a target that is independent of the surrounding tones, which is likely to be static and mid. Furthermore, the neutral tone is found to be different from the full lexical tones in the manner with which the underlying tonal target is implemented: it is slow and ineffective both in overcoming the influence of the preceding full lexical tone and in approaching its own target. Applying the recently proposed pitch target approximation model, we conclude that the neutral tone differs from the other lexical tones in Standard Chinese not only in terms of its mid target, but also in terms of the weak articulatory strength with which this target is implemented. Finally, we suggest that this new understanding is potentially applicable to other weak elements in speech.

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Section: The Neutral Tone In Standard Chinesementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Neutral Tone In Standard Chinesementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Neutral Tone In Standard Chinesementioning

confidence: 99%

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Production of Weak Elements in Speech – Evidence from F₀ Patterns of Neutral Tone in Standard Chinese

2006

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“…In Mandarin Chinese, four tones are one of the phonetic determinants of lexical meaning ͑e.g., Chao, 1948;1968;Yip, 1980͒. These four tones are mainly distinguished by their variations in fundamental frequency ͑e.g., Howie, 1976;Lin, 1988͒.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Acoustic cues to tonal contrasts in Mandarin: Implications for cochlear implants

Kuo

Rosen

Faulkner

2008

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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The present study systematically manipulated three acoustic cues-fundamental frequency ͑f0͒, amplitude envelope, and duration-to investigate their contributions to tonal contrasts in Mandarin. Simplified stimuli with all possible combinations of these three cues were presented for identification to eight normal-hearing listeners, all native speakers of Mandarin from Taiwan. The f0 information was conveyed either by an f0-controlled sawtooth carrier or a modulated noise so as to compare the performance achievable by a clear indication of voice f0 and what is possible with purely temporal coding of f0. Tone recognition performance with explicit f0 was much better than that with any combination of other acoustic cues ͑consistently greater than 90% correct compared to 33%-65%; chance is 25%͒. In the absence of explicit f0, the temporal coding of f0 and amplitude envelope both contributed somewhat to tone recognition, while duration had only a marginal effect. Performance based on these secondary cues varied greatly across listeners. These results explain the relatively poor perception of tone in cochlear implant users, given that cochlear implants currently provide only weak cues to f0, so that users must rely upon the purely temporal ͑and secondary͒ features for the perception of tone.

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“…Second, a similar issue arises with the naturalness of the tones, particularly that of the low tone used. Here, it is worth noting that some phonological analyses consider T3 in Mandarin, traditionally transcribed as a low-dipping-rising tone, to be underlyingly low (Duanmu, 1999(Duanmu, , 2007Yip, 1980). In fact, Duanmu (1999, p. 14) suggests that this tone largely has a low pitch contour, and is best described as either 211 or 11 in the Chao system (where, 5 is the highest pitch, and 1 is the lowest pitch).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 96%

Phonology modulates the illusory vowels in perceptual illusions: Evidence from Mandarin and English

Durvasula

Huang

Uehara

et al. 2018

Laboratory Phonology: Journal of the Association for Laboratory Phonology

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Native speakers perceive illusory vowels when presented with sound sequences that do not respect the phonotactic constraints of their language (Dupoux, Kakehi, Hirose, Pallier, & Mehler, 1999;Kabak & Idsardi, 2007). There is, however, less work on the quality of the illusory vowel. Recently, it has been claimed that the quality of the illusory vowel is also modulated by the phonology of the language, and that the phenomenon of illusory vowels can be understood as a result of the listener reverse inferring the best parse of the underlying representation given their native language phonology and the acoustics of the input stream (Durvasula & Kahng, 2015). The view predicts that listeners are likely to hear different illusory vowels in different phonological contexts. In support of this prediction, we show through two perceptual experiments that Mandarin Chinese speakers (but not American English speakers) perceive different illusory vowels in different phonotactic contexts. Specifically, when presented with phonotactically illegal alveopalatal coda consonants, Mandarin speakers perceived an illusory /i/, but in illegal alveolar stop coda contexts, they perceived a /ə/.

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The tonal phonology of mandarin

Cited by 95 publications

References 0 publications

Production of Weak Elements in Speech – Evidence from F₀ Patterns of Neutral Tone in Standard Chinese

Production of Weak Elements in Speech – Evidence from F₀ Patterns of Neutral Tone in Standard Chinese

Acoustic cues to tonal contrasts in Mandarin: Implications for cochlear implants

Phonology modulates the illusory vowels in perceptual illusions: Evidence from Mandarin and English

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