F0 declination in English and Mandarin Broadcast News Speech

Abstract This study investigates F 0 declination in broadcast news speech in English and Mandarin Chinese. The results demonstrate a strong relationship between utterance length and declination slope. Shorter utterances have steeper declination, even after excluding the initial rising and final lowering effects. Initial F 0 tends to be higher when the utterance is longer, whereas the low bound of final F 0 is independent of the utterance length. Both top line and baseline show declination. The top line and baseline have different patterns in Mandarin Chinese, whereas in English their patterns are similar. Mandarin Chinese has more and steeper declination than English, as well as wider pitch range and more F 0 fluctuations. Our results suggest that F 0 declination is linguistically controlled, not just a by-product of the physics and physiology of talking.

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