A study on the coarticulation of bi-syllabic words in Chinese

In this study, trans-consonantal vowel-to-vowel coarticulation in Chinese is analyzed. The target words are in the form of `bV₁.ba´, which are designed to occur on the sentence initial, medial and final positions, and the subjects are eight native speakers of standard Chinese. Vowel formants are examined at the onset, middle and offset points of the target vowel. Results show that trans-segmental coarticulation exists in Chinese, especially at the onset point of the target vowel. Coarticulation is more likely to occur on F₂, and its effect is comparatively great on the sentence initial position.