Effects of aspiration on fundamental frequency in Taiwanese syllables

Abstract

The perturbation effect on vowel fundamental frequency (F0) by voiceless aspirated and unaspirated prevocalic obstruents is investigated in Taiwanese. It is well known that F0 is significantly higher after voiceless than voiced stops. However, the perturbation effect caused by aspiration has received much less attention. Twenty-eight minimal pairs contrasting in prevocalic aspiration across three different places of articulation from seven tonal categories in Taiwanese were recorded from two male and two female speakers. An acoustic study was conducted on a total of 1120 syllables. Onset, offset, and mean F0 as well as contours of the tones after the aspirated and unaspirated obstruents were compared. Results indicate that the onset and mean F0 are significantly higher when following aspirated obstruents but no difference was found in offset F0. Tonal contour comparison shows that the F0 raising effect triggered by aspirated obstruents disappears at 50–60<th>% of the tone. Higher larynx and faster airflow rate are posited as the major factors for the higher F0 after voiceless aspirated obstruents. The present results warrant a reconsideration of the traditional theory of aspiration-induced tonal split according to which a tonal split resulted from the lowering of F0 due to aspiration.