Mechanism of Disyllabic Tonal Reduction in Taiwan Mandarin

This study was designed to test the hypothesis that time pressure is a direct cause of tonal reduction in Taiwan Mandarin. Tonal reduction refers to the phenomenon of the tones of a disyllabic unit being contracted into a monosyllabic unit. An experiment was carried out in which six native Taiwan Mandarin male speakers produced sentences containing disyllabic compound words /ma/+/ma/ with varying tonal combinations at different speech rates. Analyses indicated that increasing time pressure led to severe tonal reductions. Articulatory effort, measured by the slope of F0 peak velocity of unidirectional movement over F0 movement amplitude, is insufficient to compensate for duration-dependent undershoot (in particular, when time pressure exceeds certain thresholds). Mechanisms of tonal reduction were further examined by comparing F0 velocity profiles against the Edge-in model, a rule-based phonological model. Results showed that the residual tonal variants in contracted syllables are gradient rather than categorical—as duration is shortened, the movement towards the desired targets is gradually curtailed.