The contrast on tone between Putonghua and Taiwan Mandarin

The pitch and duration of monosyllables and disyllabic words located in different position between Putonghua and Taiwan mandarin were studied in this paper. The analyses revealed that tone 1 and tone 2 in Taiwan mandarin were different from corresponding tones in Putonghua because of effect of Minnan dialect. Tone 3 was flectional tone in Putonghua, and its character in second half was slight-rising, while it was low-falling in Taiwan mandarin. In Putonghua monosyllables, Four tones duration relation was tone 3>tone 2>tone l>tone 4, but in Taiwan mandarin, it was tone 1>tone 2>tone 3>tone 4. The differences in sentence showed that tone 2 was mid-rising in Putonghua, while it was mid-level in Taiwan mandarin; the boundary effect of prosodic phrase was bigger in Taiwan mandarin than in Putonghua; in front of the prosodic phrase boundary, the effect to lengthen duration was the same in each tone of Putonghua, whereas, in Taiwan mandarin, the extent of lengthening was bigger in tone 1 and tone 2 than in tone 3 and tone 4; the statistic result indicated that tone 3 was longer than tone 4, meanwhile, shorter than tone 1 and tone 2 in Putonghua, whereas, Tone 3 was the shortest tone in Taiwan mandarin.