A linguistic‐phonetic acoustic analysis of shanghai tones

Abstract

Abstract The linguistic phonetic properties of Shanghai tones are specified from normalised mean fundamental frequency and duration data of four male and three female speakers. Corroborative normalised F0 shapes are derived for an additional nine Shanghai speakers, and the Shanghai data compared with another Wu dialect. A linguistic phonetic contrast is demonstrated between the two varieties in their falling tones, and in consonantally induced F0 onset perturbations. The importance of retaining durational relationships in normalisation is demonstrated.