Characterising intonation in Plastic Mandarin using polynomial modelling

Abstract

This paper presents an experimental investigation of pitch variations of tone sequences under different contexts in Plastic Mandarin, a newly-formed contact-induced regional Mandarin variety. Instead of describing f₀ variations of a single tone-bearing unit, the f₀ contours of trisyllabic phrases varying in tonal composition, utterance position, and focus condition were examined by building orthogonal polynomial models on production data elicited from connected semi-spontaneous natural speech. The coefficients of the models that capture the shape of f₀ contours were subjected to further linear mixed effects analysis. This study reveals the synergistic effects of tone interactions, focus, and declination, exerted on the f₀ of the whole phrase in an integrated manner. The findings enhance our knowledge of a prevalent yet scarcely studied Mandarin variety and contribute to the on-going research into the dynamic realisation of tone and intonation in connected speech.