Effect of Coarticulation on Bi-syllabic Words in Chinese

In this study, trans-consonantal vowel-to-vowel coarticulation in Chinese is investigated. The target words are in the form of ＇bVl.ba＇, and the subjects are eight native speakers of standard Chinese. Vowel formants are examined at the onset, middle and offset points of the target vowel. Results show that trans-segmental coarticulation exists in Chinese, at the onset point of the target vowel, and in Chinese, coarticulatory effect does not extend to the middle point of the vowel.

Tonal coarticulation patterns in quadrisyllabic words and phrases with normal stress of mandarin

Quadrisyllabic words and phrases with normal stress of Mandarin were used to study the tonal coarticulation. It was firstly found that the F0perturbation at the starting-point and the ending-point of the F0 curve in each syllable caused by tonal coarticulation is larger than the intrinsic F0 difference of vowels at the starting-point and the ending-point of it. As for the tonal coarticulation, it was discovered that tonal coarticulation in word and phrase with normal stress is different to that in the nonsense sequence with even stress, and in word and phrase with normal stress, the tonal coarticulatory effects are unidirectional, and the carryover effect does not extend to the ending-point of tone-section of the following syllable and the anticipatory effect does not extend to the starting-point of tone-section of the preceding one, and the F0 perturbation by tonal coarticulation has its pattern.

A Contrastive Analysis of the Structure of Prosodic Words in Mandarin and English

This paper, particularly focusing on the pitch of prosodic words,has conducted a contrastive study on the structure of prosodic words in Englishand Mandarin . This paper reports a Mandarin monologue speech corpus-study, anexperimental phonetic attempt to conduct a study on the pitch of trisyllabic prosodicwords in Mandarin monologue. In addition, taking the characteristics of Englishprosodic words into consideration, the paper makes a contrastive analysis of prosodicwords in English and Mandarin. This study finds that the pitch of trisyllabic prosodicwords in Mandarin is inevitably affected by structural factors. As far as the leftsyllable is concerned, the grammatical category, prosodic hierarchical boundary andthe position of the intonational phrase where the syllable is located, the mid syllableand the right syllable may have influences on the pitch contour of the left syllable.As to the mid syllable, the grammatical category, the left syllable, the right syllableand the position of the intonational phrase where the syllable is located may haveinfluences on the pitch contour of the mid syllable. As for the right syllable, theprosodic hierarchical boundary where the syllable is located and the mid syllable mayhave effects on the pitch contour of the right syllable. Different from the previousfindings of the study on read corpus, this study shows that the mid syllable not onlyhas dissimilatory effects but also has assimilatory effects on the pitch of its precedingsyllable. The left syllable has anticipatory effects on the onset pitch of the mid syllableand the right syllable has coarticulation effects on the offset pitch of the mid syllable.