Considerations in the normalisation of the fundamental frequency of linguistic tone

Abstract Some considerations in the normalisation of tone are discussed, and their application demonstrated on the fundamental frequency data of seven speakers of a variety of Wu Chinese. It is argued that, although a considerable reduction in between-speaker variance can be achieved by either a Z-Score or Fraction of Range normalisation, the former strategy is preferable because of its slightly superior numerical performance, and relative lack of methodological problems. The derivation of a possible Linguistic-Phonetic representation for comparison with other varieties is also illustrated.