Physiological and Physical Mechanisms for Fundamental Frequency Control in Some Tone Languages and a Command-Response Model for Generation of Their F 0 Contours

This paper first presents the physiological and physical properties of the vocal fold and the laryngeal structure involving intrinsic laryngeal muscles that are mainly responsible for the generation of F0 contours with global components and positive local components. It then takes up the mechanism involving extrinsic laryngeal muscles for generating negative local components. Based on these evidences, a command-response model is derived for generating F0 contours of tone languages with an extremely high accuracy. Experimental results support the validity of the model for Mandarin, Thai, and Cantonese.