Frequency Effect and Neutralization of Tones in Mandarin Chinese

Abstract Tonal neutralization in Mandarin has long been thought to be connected with lexical frequency. But this has never been investigated quantitatively because of the methodological challenge. In this study, a production experiment was run with speakers reading disyllabic words in neutral tones with frequency estimates derived from a Frequency Dictionary. The dependent measures were the three acoustic correlates of: duration, F0 contour and intensity. Independent measures included the lexical frequency at three levels (low, middle and high). Regression analysis showed that neutralization of tones are directly correlated with lexical frequency independent of other factors. A regularity, the more frequent, the shorter in duration; the more frequent, the lower in pitch; the more frequent, the weaker in intensity governs the neutralization of tones in reduced syllables. However, the exact shape of such an effect displays a different scenario in a different frequency range. Only high frequency words display a significant difference from low frequency words. Last but not the least, an exemplar representation is proposed to express a neutral tone’s observed frequency effect naturally.