The pitch levels of female speech in two Chinese villages

The pitch levels of female speech in two villages situated in a relatively remote area of China were compared. The dialects spoken in the two villages are similar to Standard Mandarin, and all subjects had learned to read and speak Standard Mandarin at school. Subjects read out a passage of roughly 3.25 min in Standard Mandarin, and pitch values were obtained at 5-ms intervals. The overall pitch levels in the two villages differed significantly, supporting the conjecture that pitch levels of speech are influenced by a mental representation acquired through long-term exposure to the speech of others. (C) 2009 Acoustical Society of America