Duration reflexes of syllable structure in Mandarin

Recent discussions of Mandarin phonology have appealed to various aspects of phonetic duration as support for hypotheses concerning the structure of the syllable. But the actual empirical evidence for these claims is based on early studies typically conducted with a limited number of speakers (often just one) using varied methods of data collection and analysis. This paper provides a more firm empirical foundation for various durational reflections of the Mandarin syllable based on the analysis of 960 monosyllabic words recorded by five female speakers. Our main findings are as follows. We find no statistically significant difference between CV and CVN syllables, supporting the bimoraic analysis of the former. We replicate the Tone 3 > Tone 2 > Tone 1 > Tone 4 duration hierarchy of earlier studies with a larger variety of syllable types. Relative to CV syllables, the nuclear vowel is shortened in both CGV and CVN structures suggesting that the prenuclear glide is associated to the syllable rhyme. The vowel is shortest in CGVN syllables supporting the analysis of the Cjan > Cjen low vowel raising process as motivated by phonetic undershoot. Finally, in Cuan syllables the nuclear vowel's backness is determined more by the coda than the prenuclear glide.