Effects of prosodic context on Taiwanese tones

Abstract

Duration and F0 patterns for the high and high-falling tones of Taiwanese Amoy in different contexts were investigated in two experiments. The first examined the target tones in four prosodic positions: initial, medial, and final to a prosodic phrase, and utterance final. The nonutterance-final targets also varied in tonal context, being followed by high or mid tone. Words at the end of a prosodic phrase were substantially longer than in the other prosodic positions. The target tones were higher in frequency phrase-initially and phrase-medially than phrase- or utterance-finally. Tonal coarticulation occurred between the target tone and its following tone. When followed by high tone, the offset of the high target tone did not change, while that of the high-falling target tone increased. The second experiment investigated tonal coarticulation further by examining the high tone followed by five different tones in the middle and the end of a prosodic phrase. It is predicted that the tone height and the tone pattern of the target tone will vary depending on the following tone.