The production and perception of tonal variation -: evidence from Tianjin Mandarin

Abstract

Spoken language is rich in its variability due to various factors. Previous studies have paid much attention to how people produce and perceive different types of segmental variation typically in non-tonal languages. Much less, however, has been investigated and understood on how suprasegmental features such as lexical tones vary in their acoustic realizations in different contexts in speech production and how the variabilities further affect listeners' perception of the lexical tones and the recognition of speech. This dissertation provides a comprehensive study of both local and global tonal variability in Tianjin Mandarin with a series of well-controlled experiments. The dissertation consists of seven chapters. Chapter 1 briefly introduces the main research issues to be discussed in this dissertation, followed by a description of the phonological system of Tianjin Mandarin in Chapter 2. Chapter 3 sets out to investigate the f0 variability induced by two local tonal variation processes, i.e., tone sandhi and tonal coarticulation. Chapters 4 and 5 investigate the perceptual consequences of the local tonal variability discussed in Chapter 3. Chapter 6 sets out to further understand how global factors might influence the tonal f0 realization. Chapter 7 revisits the research questions and concludes the main findings.China Scholarship CouncilUBL - phd migration 201