Production and perception of Taiwanese tones in different tonal and prosodic contexts

Abstract

The present study investigated the production and perception of Taiwanese tones in different tonal and prosodic contexts. The production study examined the effects of prosodic position and following tone on duration and fundamental frequency (f 0) of Taiwanese tones. The results showed that Taiwanese tones were acoustically influenced by prosodic position and to a certain extent by tonal context. f 0range was substantially shifted by prosodic position in some conditions: final lowering of f 0and final lengthening were found in utterance-final and, to a lesser extent, in phrase-final positions. Anticipatory tonal coarticulation affected f 0but not duration of Taiwanese tones. Assimilatory effects of the following tone occurred on contour tones. f 0range in general was not affected by tonal context, although some subject-dependent variation was found. The perception study examined the extent to which tonal coarticulation is perceptible. Listeners’ identification of tonal sequences on the basis of extracted initial tones indicated that, under certain conditions, contextual variability in the initial tone was detectable and contributed to the identifiability of the following tone.