Differences in the F0 Patterns of Speech: Tone Language Versus Stress Language

A comparison was made between the fundamental frequency (F0) patterns of continuous speech in Mandarin Chinese and American English. Seven adult male native speakers of each language were asked to read an unemotional narrative text written in their language. The analysis showed the F o patterns of Chinese to have a greater amount of dynamic movement than those of English. The speech of the Mandarin subjects displayed a greater average rate of F o change than that of the American subjects. The Chinese speech was also characterized by more F o fluctuations (peaks and valleys) as a function of time and as a function of the number of syllables. The results are consistent with the notion that the F o patterns of Mandarin Chinese (a tone language) are determined mainly by the tone contours of all the lexical items in a sentence, while the F o patterns of American English (a stress language) are determined mainly by the placement of primary stress on only a few of the lexical items in a sentence.

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