The preliminary study about neutral tone: Dialect effect between North Official Mandarin speakers in China and Taiwan Mandarin speakers

2005 ◽  
Vol 117 (4) ◽  
pp. 2457-2457
Author(s):  
Jennifer Li
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhe-chen Guo

This paper reports results from a study investigating whether there is a perceptual difference between gesturally different Mandarin retroflexes. Previous studies have suggested that there are two articulatory manners for Mandarin retroflexes: One involves the tongue tip being “curled-up,” and the other the tongue body being “bunched-up.” Thus, by implementing a perception test on Taiwan Mandarin listeners and an acoustic analysis, the research determines whether retroflexes produced with these gestures will be perceived differently. The resultsdings then show that “curled-up” and “bunched-up” retroflexes are not perceptually contrastive at a phonological level. However, the latter are perceived to be phonetically more retroflexed, with such property of stronger retroflexion reflected in their lower M1 (first moment) values. These findings yield one pedagogical implication. The teaching of retroflex articulations can be made reference to the gesture with which Mandarin learners can produce with more ease.


2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 9-50
Author(s):  
Karen HUANG

Taiwan Mandarin, one of the more syllable-timed dialects of Mandarin, has fewer unstressed syllables than Standard Mandarin. Acoustic analyses show that the supposedly unstressed syllables—neutral-tone syllables—in Taiwan Mandarin behave differently from those of Standard Mandarin. Unlike Standard Mandarin, these syllables do not raise their pitch after Tone 3. They have a distinct static mid-low pitch target and the target is implemented with a stronger articulatory strength. Moreover, acoustic analyses demonstrate that not all of these “unstressed syllables” are unstressed. The phonetic evidence suggests that these neutral-tone syllables should be analyzed as unaccented rather than unstressed in Taiwan Mandarin. These unaccented syllables are only lexically marked, and their pitch is neutralized into a mid-low tone. This study sheds light on how rhythm can affect stress and accent in a lexical tone language.


2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-5
Author(s):  
Nina GOLOB

This last year has been busy for the journal not only in terms of the volume of submissions but also due to the newliest demands as an online journal. Words of appreciaton go to the authors who have contributed to this edition, all the reviewers, finally to the production team, who prepared the papers for publication. Altogether this summer’s edition of the journal brings together six research articles. The first paper was authored by Karen HUANG, who acoustically analyzed neutral tone syllables in Taiwan Mandarin to show the effects of stress and accent on its tone patterns.   The following paper is a corpus study on phonemic status of Bangla nasal vowels and was written by Jahurul ISLAM. It offers a new insight into the number of such vowels, which is lower than reported up until now. Nina GOLOB and Mateja PETROVČIČ wrote an article on vowel sequences in Japanese and Chinese, and reviewed their appearance in official Latin scripts of the two languages and pronunciation catches in those scripts. A paper by Liulin ZHANG dedicates its attention to a character-based historical overview of the notional passive construction in Chinese through corpus analysis. Yet another paper on Chinese was written by LI Wenchao, who focused on the evolution of the Chinese verb 断 (duàn ‘break’) and discussed the development of its several syntactic functions. Last but not least, I-hao WOO’s paper on Mandarin Chinese perfective suffix -‍le proposed a straightforward definition on the core function of the suffix, and provided a simple way for the instruction of it. Editors and Editorial Board wish the regular and new readers of the ALA journal a pleasant read full of inspiration.


Author(s):  
John H.L. Watson ◽  
John L. Swedo ◽  
R.W. Talley

A preliminary study of human mammary carcinoma on the ultrastructural level is reported for a metastatic, subcutaneous nodule, obtained as a surgical biopsy. The patient's tumor had responded favorably to a series of hormonal therapies, including androgens, estrogens, progestins, and corticoids for recurring nodules over eight years. The pertinent nodule was removed from the region of the gluteal maximus, two weeks following stilbestrol therapy. It was about 1.5 cms in diameter, and was located within the dermis. Pieces from it were fixed immediately in cold fixatives: phosphate buffered osmium tetroxide, glutaraldehyde, and paraformaldehyde. Embedment in each case was in Vestopal W. Contrasting was done with combinations of uranyl acetate and lead hydroxide.


Author(s):  
H.D. Geissinger ◽  
C.K. McDonald-Taylor

A new strain of mice, which had arisen by mutation from a dystrophic mouse colony was designated ‘mdx’, because the genetic defect, which manifests itself in brief periods of muscle destruction followed by episodes of muscle regeneration appears to be X-linked. Further studies of histopathological changes in muscle from ‘mdx’ mice at the light microscopic or electron microscopic levels have been published, but only one preliminary study has been on the tibialis anterior (TA) of ‘mdx’ mice less than four weeks old. Lesions in the ‘mdx’ mice vary between different muscles, and centronucleation of fibers in all muscles studied so far appears to be especially prominent in older mice. Lesions in young ‘mdx’ mice have not been studied extensively, and the results appear to be at variance with one another. The degenerative and regenerative aspects of the lesions in the TA of 23 to 26-day-old ‘mdx’ mice appear to vary quantitatively.


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