Abstract
Monosyllabic words of various phonemic constitutions were spoken with the Four Tones of the standard Chinese by two male and a female speakers born in Formosa, and typical fundamental frequency patterns of the Four Tones for each speaker were extracted from those speech samples, and their average fundamental frequency, range of changes in fundamental frequency and duration were also analyzed. Listening tests were then conducted to identify the kind of tone of the speech samples, and perceptual cues of the Four Tones were investigated through the confusion among tones, which was characteristic of each group of native and non-native listeners. Based on the results of the acoustical analysis and the listening test the essential features of the Four Tones were derived. Effect of the amplitude envelope on the tone accent was also discussed.
