Volume 30, Issue 3

Measurements of the fundamental frequency of 136 Mandarin citation syllables have yielded average curves for the four distinctive tones in nine types of syllable. It appears that the basic contours of Mandarin tones are coextensive only with the syllabic vowel and any voiced segment that may follow it, while those portions of the pitch pattern that occur with an initial voiced consonant or a non-syllabic vowel are merely anticipatory adjustments of the voice.

Phonemic theories must be classified according to their acceptance, or refusal, of the Saussurean distinction between form and substance. If one is to accept this distinction, one has to disagree with the principle that a phoneme is a phoneme in every environment, a disagreement which means rejecting the taxonomic and/or generative concepts of (partial and total) phonemic overlapping, suprasegmental versus inherent distinctive features, universality of distinctive features, phonemic (non morphemic) junctures, morphophonemes, and a phonographic system without any logographic element. As to the mute e in French, an attempt is being made to establish a theory of clusters independently from it, on the grounds of feature-compatibility: the mute e is thus considered as the (facultative) phonetic aspect of an incompatibility between phonemic features.

Two groups of listeners were subjected to our own version of the Semantic Differential (Eindrucksdifferential) and responded to synthesized vocalic stimuli. One group consisted of professional phoneticians, the other group comprised subjects relatively inexperienced in any of the phonetic sciences. The two sets of judgments were factor-analyzed. The results of the dimensional analyses for the two groups differed in various respects as did the ‘psychological distance’ of segments which was operationalized by ‘profile distance’. These symptomatic differences were discussed with regard to ‘phonemic distance’ (D_ph) which was computed according to various phonological models. It seems that the judgments of the expert group were strongly biased by phonological concepts whereas the phonetically inexperienced listeners responded in a truely naive manner.