Acontrastive, acoustic and socio-linguistic research on mono-syllabic vowels and tones in standard Chinese of Peijing and Taiwan

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This research aimed to investigate and contrast the Standard Chinese languages (Mandarin) of Peijing and Taiwan, specifically, it aimed to investigate the syllables with the same tone contour pronounced by the speakers of the two regions regarding the following two points::i.Whether and what kinds of phonological and acoustical differences can be found between the speakers of the two regionsii.What kinds of socio-linguistic variations can be found within each regional languageWith the above as the goals of the research, we made field research and data collection at the two regions. All the possible syllables types (1,275 types) of modern standard Chinese pronounced by the total of 83 speakers (54 from Beijing and 29 from Taipei) were recorded in the form of sound wave file (approximately one hour for one speaker). Then, we segmented each person's sound wave file into 1,275 individual syllable files for acoustically analyzing each syllable individually, and we made segmented files of 18 … More speakers'(5 Beijing files and 13 Taipei files) before March, 2005, the end of this research period. As the results of this contrastive analysis so far, we note here the following two findings concerning the syllable tone contours of Standard Chinese speakers from Taipei as most remarkable and important, though they are based on the limited data processed so far, and yet to be reevaluated with additional, remaining data sets:1)Syllables of Tone 3 contour pronounced by Taiwan Mandarin speakers are occasionally unstable, and about 3% of the syllables tone contours approximate those of Tone 2 or Tone 4 syllables.2)More than half of Tone 3 contour syllables do not follow the typical Tone 3 contour, i.e., the so-called"half tone"of quick tone falling (2-1-1), but show a slow/lengthy falling tone pattern. At the same time, however, such speakers pronounced many Tone 4 syllables as the (3-1) falling, instead of its typical contour pattern of the (5-1) falling.The above findings are significant in that they constitute counterevidence to the widely accepted theoretical assumption that there exists no regional variation for Standard Chinese in any aspects including its syllable tonal patterns. They even suggest that Taiwan Mandarin might possess a tonal contour system of its own. Less