Onset-rhyme temporal structure of Mandarin syllables

Abstract

In order to determine whether rhymes of Mandarin Chinese syllables can be said to have the status of a temporal invariant in some sense, the durations of onsets, rhymes, and nasal codas were measured. The effects of different onsets and vowel qualities, as well as the presence or absence of high-vowel onglides or offglides or a final nasal consonant were considered. The syllables were spoken at normal and fast tempos in sentence frames by six speakers. The main result is that vowel + nasal rhymes and vowel + high offglide rhymes (e.g.,/ai/, /au/) are not appreciably longer than rhymes with simple vowels (confirming an earlier claim by Ou Yah, 1980), although a longer onset does in general make a syllable longer. Finer temporal compensations help further characterize the status of the rhyme as a quasiinvariant.