The style of speech illustrated is that typical of the educated younger generation in Beijing. The recording is that of a 25-year-old female graduate student who has lived all her life in Beijing.

The style of speech illustrated is that typical of the educated younger generation in Hong Kong. The recording is that of a 22-year-old female university student who has lived all her life in Hong Kong.

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The study investigates the influence of tone on vowel quality. Speakers of a tone language, Taiwanese, were instructed to produce the vowels, [i], [u], [e], [o], [ɔ], and [a], with two maximally contrasted tones, the high-falling and the low, in terms of fundamental frequency level. In most cases, these vowels are meaningful monosyllabic morphemes in that language. Preliminary results indicate that vowel quality is affected by tone. All vowels except [a] have a higher first formant frequency when they are produced with the high-falling tone. The difference in formant frequency is small but consistent. There are cases in which the vowel is raised if the tone of some lexical items is replaced by a high tone, e.g., in Foochow (Chao, 1933; Yuen et al., 1960; Chen and Norman, 1965; Maddieson, 1975) and a rising tone raises a vowel, e.g., in Lahu (Matisoff, 1973). Our results seem to point in the opposite direction from these cases as the first formant frequency is taken to be inversely related to vowel height. [Research supported by NSF.]