Production of Weak Elements in Speech – Evidence from F₀ Patterns of Neutral Tone in Standard Chinese

Abstract

Many weak elements in speech, such as schwa in English and neutral tone inStandard Chinese, are commonly assumed to be unspecified or underspecifiedphonologically. The surface phonetic values of these elements are assumed toderive from interpolation between the adjacent phonologically specified elementsor from the spreading of the contextual phonological features. In the present study,we re-evaluate this view by investigating detailed F0 contours of neutral-tone syllablesin Standard Chinese, which are widely accepted as toneless underlyingly. Werecorded sentences containing 0-3 consecutive neutral-tone syllables at twospeaking rates with two focus conditions. Results of the experiment indicate thatneutral-tone syllables do have a target that is independent of the surroundingtones, which is likely to be static and mid. Furthermore, the neutral tone is found tobe different from the full lexical tones in the manner with which the underlyingtonal target is implemented: it is slow and ineffective both in overcoming the influenceof the preceding full lexical tone and in approaching its own target. Applyingthe recently proposed pitch target approximation model, we conclude that theneutral tone differs from the other lexical tones in Standard Chinese not only interms of its mid target, but also in terms of the weak articulatory strength withwhich this target is implemented. Finally, we suggest that this new understandingis potentially applicable to other weak elements in speech.