Contributions of Acoustic Factors to Tone Identification in Whispered Mandarin

The identification of whispered tones in Mandarin is influenced by factors such as intensity, duration, and spectrum. This study aimed to analyze the contributions of these factors to whispered tone identification. Recorded whispered samples simulating real communication for four tones were matched into six pairs, and then six sets of stimuli were synthesized by modifying their intensity and duration. A binary forced-choice identification experiment was conducted, and multiple binary logistic regression was employed to analyze the results. We found that the contri-butions of intensity contour, duration, and spectrum to whis-pered tone identification varied with tones. Duration had mini-mal contribution to the identification of all whispered tones. In contrast, intensity contour had the most significant contribution to T3 identification, which might be related to the dip in the intensity contour of T3. Spectrum also significantly influenced T3 and T4 identification, possibly due to energy reduction in the high-frequency band. These findings help us to explain the differences in identification accuracy for various tones.