Emotional tones of a speaker’s voice and lexical tones involve similar acoustic correlates, but only lexical tones could change the meaning of a word in tonal languages. The purpose of this study is to investigate the interaction between these two types of tonal variations by examining the acoustic and perceptual characteristics of the four Mandarin tones across different emotional tones of voice. In experiment 1, acoustic analyses of fundamental frequency, mean amplitude, and duration was conducted on a syllable with the four tones produced in a carrier phrase with four different emotional tones of voice (anger, fear, happiness, and sadness). The same acoustic measures were also taken on the Mandarin neutral tone produced with the four emotional tones. In experiment 2, speech materials from experiment 1 were used to investigate the effects of the emotional tones on the perception of Mandarin tones. The results showed that all four emotional tones had significant effects on the acoustics and perception of Mandarin tones. These findings suggest that emotional tones of voice impact both acoustic and perceptual characteristics of lexical tones.

This paper investigates whether female chief executive officers (CEOs) perform different level of tax avoidance behavior compared with male CEOs in China. We further examine whether female CEOs with political background/connection can transform the relation between gender and tax avoidance behavior. Using the total book-tax differences and permanent book-tax differences to measure the level of tax avoidance behavior following prior studies, we find that Chinese female CEOs perform the same level of tax avoidance behavior relative to their male counterparts. In addition, we find significant evidence that female CEOs with political background tend to conduct more tax avoidance activities relative to those female CEOs without political relation. These results are in contrast to a traditional western viewpoint that female managers have a higher risk aversion attitude.

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Lexical tones and emotions are conveyed by a similar set of acoustic parameters; therefore, listeners of tonal languages face the challenge of processing lexical tones and emotions in the acoustic signal concurrently. This study examined how emotions affect the acoustics and perception of Mandarin tones. In Experiment 1, Mandarin tones were produced by professional actors with angry, fear, happy, sad, and neutral tones of voice. Acoustic analyses on mean F0, F0 range, mean amplitude, and duration were conducted on syllables excised from a carrier phrase. The results showed that emotions affect Mandarin tone acoustics to different degrees depending on specific Mandarin tones and specific emotions. In Experiment 2, selected syllables from Experiment 1 were presented in isolation or in context. Listeners were asked to identify the Mandarin tones and emotions of the syllables. The results showed that emotions affect Mandarin tone identification to a greater extent than Mandarin tones affect emotion recognition. Both Mandarin tones and emotions were identified more accurately in syllables presented with the carrier phrase, but the carrier phrase affected Mandarin tone identification and emotion recognition to different degrees. These findings suggest that lexical tones and emotions interact in complex but systematic ways.