Second-degree polynomial model of Mandarin Chinese Lexical Tone F0 Contours

Authors: Tomasz Kuczmarski, Danien Duran, Norbert Kordek, Jagoda Bruni

Abstract:

The current paper presents a preliminary evaluation of a second-degree polynomial pitch stylization method for MC cited lexical tones. This study was devised to verify methodological assumptions for a subsequent work where a systematic manipulation of the FO curve in MC syllables will be used to study the perceptual Magnet Effect. For this purpose, a number of MC syllables representing various phonological templates were chosen from a single speaker corpus. Stylized pitch curves were resynthesized and compared with their natural counterparts in a discrimination experiment. The results of native speakers’ judgments show that the approximation method is adequate for the desired application.