15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-15)

Barcelona, Spain
August 3-9, 2003


The Function of F0 in Phonemic Restoration

Ching X. Xu

Northwestern University, USA

In this study we investigated the phonemic restoration of consonant, vowel and syllable in a carrier sentence of Mandarin Chinese by implementing a two-force-choice experiment. Ten native speakers of Mandarin listened to twenty-six stimulus sentences, each containing a target portion that was replaced by a louder pink noise, and chose from two alternatives to indicate the identity of the missing sound(s). The consistency with which the missing parts were recognized seems to support our hypothesis that fundamental frequency (F0) plays an important role in phonemic restoration. The F0 account potentially applies in other cases of auditory induction as well.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Xu, Ching X. (2003): "The function of F0 in phonemic restoration", In ICPhS-15, 775-778.