Instrumental investigation of single and paired Mandarin tonemes

Abstract : The commonly accepted five registers of Mandarin are verified and shown each to be approximately 36 cps wide, with a standard deviation of 1.29 cps on a normalized scale. The 68-percent normal population limits are delineated for the emphatic tone forms, as well as new 5-register number notations for tones actually produced in isolation and in couplets. A complete permutation of toneme environment contouroids is included. The study was based on isolated and coupled words of high linguistic frequency, which were recorded by eighteen professors of the Mandarin language. The pitch contours and protensities of their utterances, displayed as normalized frequency-change ratios and durations, were grouped according to tonemic context and compared for experimental consistency with postulated theoretical behavior. For standardization and convenience, individual differences were removed by representing tone behavior in terms of contouroids (simplified contours). Categories include tones alone, pre-neutral position, neutral behavior, and the effects of pre- and post-tone position on couplets. (Author)