文献类型：期刊文献

英文题名：Dipping and Falling as competing strategies for maintaining the distinctiveness of the low tone in the four-tone system of Kaifeng Mandarin

作者：Wang, Lei[1,2];van de Ven, Marco[3];Gussenhoven, Carlos[2]

机构：[1]East China Univ Sci & Technol, Sch Foreign Languages, 130 Meilong Rd, Shanghai 200237, Peoples R China;[2]Radboud Univ Nijmegen, Ctr Language Studies, Nijmegen, Netherlands;[3]Radboud Univ Nijmegen, Behav Sci Inst, Nijmegen, Netherlands

年份：2025

卷号：109

外文期刊名：JOURNAL OF PHONETICS

收录：;WOS:【SSCI(收录号:WOS:001409670200001)，A&HCI(收录号:WOS:001409670200001)】；

基金：We would like to thank Qi Zhang (Donghua University) for providing equipment, Yen-Chen Hao for enlightening discussion, Sai Wang (Kai-feng University) , Shi Yan (Henan University) , and Chenshu Fang (Kai-feng Vocational College of Culture and Arts) for recruiting participants. Thanks also go to the anonymous reviewers and to Kechun Li, for their corrections and many helpful suggestions. We are grateful to our participants for giving their time to this experiment. This research was supported by a travel grant provided by Radboud University.

语种：英文

外文关键词：L -tone perception; Contrast maintenance; Dipping; Idiosyncratic feature; Inter-speaker variation; Kaifeng Mandarin

摘要：Kaifeng Mandarin has four tones (LH, HL, H, L), among which the citation pronunciation of L is an f0 fall (the 'Falling variant') for some speakers and a falling-rising f0 contour (the 'Dipping variant') for others. Seeking to comprehend the rationale behind this idiosyncratic variation, we decided to investigate the distinctiveness of each variant of L with each of the three other tones, LH, HL and H. Accordingly, we constructed six ten-step f0 continua, using two naturally spoken syllables [ma] spoken by a male and a female speaker as source files. In a two- alternative forced choice task, the Falling and Dipping variants turned out to be equally distinctive. Specifically, the results revealed distinct categorizations between the Dipping variant and HL as well as between the Falling variant and LH. However, when the Dipping variant needed to be distinguished from LH and the Falling variant from HL, recognition accuracy dropped significantly, favoring the complex tone. The two L-variants were equally discriminable from H. This overall functional similarity of the two variants goes some way towards understanding their coexistence within the same speech community. Because communicative intentions played no role in the experiment, it remains to be seen if the distribution across speakers will remain stable in production experiments that vary communicative duress, as created by the need to discriminate between the L-tone and each of the two complex tones. (c) 2025 Elsevier Ltd. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies.