Whether and How Mandarin Sandhied Tone 3 and Underlying Tone 2 differ in Terms of Vowel Quality?

Whether and How Do Mandarin Sandhied Tone 3 and Underlying Tone 2 Differ? Yu-Jung Lin Yu-Yin Hsu Department of Linguistics, Indiana University Bloomington, U.S.A. Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong lin41@indiana.edu yyhsu@polyu.edu.hk Abstract One interesting linguistic question has been whether and how the characteristics of sandhied Tone 3 are similar to or different from an underlying Tone 2 in Mandarin. In this study, we took a micro view to investigate the vowel height, duration, and rime structure in syllables, and their influence on the degree of Tone 3 sandhi through native speakers’ speech production and perception. It was found that vowel height and duration played important roles in shaping the F0 contour of the sandhied Tone 3 in production. As to perception, sandhied Tone 3 syllables with low vowels and longer duration were more likely to be perceived as Tone 3. 1 Introduction Mandarin Tone 3 (T3) sandhi generally refers to a T3 syllable’s tonal contour that has been changed from the original falling-rising tone to a contour perceived as Tone 2 (T2). This sandhi process takes place when a T3 syllable is followed by another T3 syllable (Chao, 1948). Many studies tested whether the sandhied T3 and the underlying T2 are truly the same. Some studies have discovered that acoustically, the pitch height of sandhied T3s (T3S) were lower than those of underlying T2s (e.g., Shen, 1990; Xu, 1997; Peng 1996; Kuo, Xu, & Yip, 2007; Yuan & Chen, 2014). Concerning tone perception, Wang and Li (1967) and Peng (1996) argued that the difference between T3S and underlying T2 cannot be perceived, but Speer and Xu (2008), with eye-tracking data, reported that listeners who are native Mandarin speakers can perceive the differences between T3S and underlying T2. Assuming that the intrinsic acoustic properties of vowels can influence their syllables’ tonal contours and in turn may influence listeners’ categorical perception of tone types, in the current study, we focused on effects of vowel height, rime structures, and syllable duration in the production and the perception of T3S and underlying T2 items. Several studies have pointed out that higher vowels tend to have higher fundamental frequencies than low vowels (i.e., a phenomenon referred to as intrinsic F0; Whalen & Levitt, 1995; Whalen, Gick, & LeSourd., 1999), and Shi and Zhang (1986) reported that such F0 characteristics were found in all four citation tones in Mandarin Chinese, although they did not report whether and how such characteristics influence the tonal contour. With respect to duration, the consensus is that T3 is usually the longest among the four Mandarin tones (e.g., Xu, 1997; Liu & Samuel, 2004; Wu & Kenstowicz, 2015), as demonstrating a falling- rising contour requires more time than demonstrating a level or a unidirectional tone change. In perception studies, some have reported that longer duration is needed for syllables with lower F0 to be perceived as the same length than for syllables with higher F0 (Yu, Lee, & Lee, 2014). Interestingly, Peng (1996) reported …

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