Duration of tone sandhi in Mandarin Chinese.

Abstract

Tone sandhi is the tonal alternation when they are connected in speech flow. Six types of tone sandhi of disyllabic words in Mandarin Chinese are investigated in this research, including the neutral tone, the dipping tone alternation, /bu/, /yi1/, /yi2/, and double change (both of tone changes in a disyllabic word). The paper explores the duration of these six types and whether the neutral tone can change into the citation tones (level, rising, dipping, and falling tones) if we change the duration of the neutral tone. Five Chinese native speakers participate in the study. Two tasks are used to elicit data. First, speakers are required to read 40 disyllabic words. The second one is an identification task. The duration of eight neutral tones are elongated by acoustic technology. The participants hear the eight processed neutral tones and eight unprocessed neutral tones, and are asked to judge the tone types. The results indicate that the neutral tone has the shortest duration, and the duration of other sandhi tone is shorter than that of the normal citation tones. The data also show that the neutral tone and citation tones can be altered based on duration and pitch.