Acoustical Studies of Mandarin Vowels and Tones

Originally published in 1976, the sixth book in the Princeton-Cambridge Studies in Chinese Linguistics series was one of the first in any language to apply the techniques of acoustic phonetics to Mandarin Chinese. The present volume describes the acoustic cues for the perception of nine vowels and four tones (that is, patterns of voice pitch that serve to distinguish words). The description is based on an analysis of the speech of one male speaker of the Peking dialect, the results of which were used to determine the dimensions of a set of synthetic vowels and tones. In a series of perception tests these synthetic speech samples were presented to a group of twelve Mandarin speakers for identification with Mandarin characters. The series represents a systematic and highly detailed linguistic analysis of the Chinese languages. It provides a sophisticated working-tool and a comprehensive library of reference.