Stop consonants in Mandarin Chinese are all voiceless at word-initial positions only showing aspirated and unaspirated distinctions. Between the two phonation types, voice onset time (VOT) shows a clear contrast in duration, whereas voice onset fundamental frequency (onset F0) does not, as seen in previous studies. This study reports our first use of improved instrumentation techniques to record speech sound, oral airflow and glottal activity to examine consonant aspiration and onset F0. Glottal abduction, adduction and vibration cycles are monitored by a new external photo-glottographic system (ePGG) refined for better signal quality to detect accurate voice onset. Experimental data on Mandarin stops obtained from two male subjects suggests that consonant aspiration results in a large variation of VOT and oral airflow at voice onset. The onset F0 shows individual variation of falling and rising contours, and it is higher in aspirated stops than in unaspirated ones.
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