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How do we
explain the data (red stars) from a sequence of templates (green stars)? There are huge changes in syllables 2 and
4, though neither of those syllables bothers a native listener. In syllable 2, the tone 4 is realized as
something like a tone 2, but (in context), listeners identify it as a tone
4. The tone on the last syllable is
drastically pushed down, yet is again correctly perceived in context. Obviously, intonation is not a simple
concatenation of templates.
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It is equally
true that intonation is not the result of a simple smoothing operation as
assumed by Fujisaki. The strength of
a smooth that would be needed to invert the second syllable would be very
large and would oversmooth many other sections. Likewise, the lowering of the final tone is not consistent
with a simple smoothing operation.
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The clue to what
is going on likes at the boundary between the first and second
syllables. Linguistically, the
pitch should instantly hop up from the end of tone 3 to the beginning of tone
1, but that’s physically impossible – the muscles can’t respond
instantly. Another clue is that the
second syllable is weak, based on other evidence (phoneme substitution,
etc). It looks like the brain is
deliberately sacrificing the second syllable so that it’s neighbors can be
executed properly.
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