Prosodic and Acoustic Features of Emotional Speech in Taiwan Mandarin

The present study investigated pitch and durational cues of emotional speech in Taiwan Mandarin. Acted connected speech in anger, joy, sorrow, fear and neutral emotions were recorded. Results showed that F0 height and speech rate were more correlated with the arousal dimension, which differentiate emotions of high arousal, such as anger and joy, from low arousal ones. On the other hand, final lengthening was shown to distinguish emotions of different valences. Negative emotions, such as anger and sorrow, had longer lengthening than positive ones. In addition, instead of using the size code, speakers of Taiwan Mandarin mainly utilize arousal cues in cueing anger, which was shown through raised pitch register and earlier peak alignment.