Segment reduction in disyllabic words with tones in standard Chinese

This paper studies the acoustic properties of segments in different syllable positions of words with tones in Standard Chinese. Through the investigation of monophthongs and aspirated stops in disyllabic words in broadcast news speech, gradient reduction is found for both vowels and consonants in the second syllable position-vowels tend to be centralized in the F1/F2 vowel space, and aspirated stops exhibit a continuum of reduction. The differentiation of syllable positions in the phonetic realization of segments is consistent with the prediction of the trochaic metrical structure hypothesis for Standard Chinese.