Effects of emotional tones of voice on the acoustic and perceptual characteristics of Mandarin tones

Abstract

Emotional tones of a speaker’s voice and lexical tones involve similar acoustic correlates, but only lexical tones could change the meaning of a word in tonal languages. The purpose of this study is to investigate the interaction between these two types of tonal variations by examining the acoustic and perceptual characteristics of the four Mandarin tones across different emotional tones of voice. In experiment 1, acoustic analyses of fundamental frequency, mean amplitude, and duration was conducted on a syllable with the four tones produced in a carrier phrase with four different emotional tones of voice (anger, fear, happiness, and sadness). The same acoustic measures were also taken on the Mandarin neutral tone produced with the four emotional tones. In experiment 2, speech materials from experiment 1 were used to investigate the effects of the emotional tones on the perception of Mandarin tones. The results showed that all four emotional tones had significant effects on the acoustics and perception of Mandarin tones. These findings suggest that emotional tones of voice impact both acoustic and perceptual characteristics of lexical tones.