Praat Manual: Analyzing tones

Now let's discuss how we analyze tone using Praat. We will use a recording of the four Mandarin words as an example.

1. Created a wav file with four Chinese words mā "mother", má "hemp", mǎ "horse", and mà "scold"
2. Selected the file and click "View& Edit"
3. "Pitch" → tick "Show pitch"

The window is like this:

Figure 1

This window provides us with a graphic presentation of the variation in fundamental frequency (pitch contours) of the four Mandarin tones.

4. Adjust the pitch settings to make the display clearer.

I just brief two important points here:

• First, adjust the range of analysis as men have pitch ranges in the 50-180 Hz range while women's pitch tends to be higher, 80-250 Hz.
• Second, autocorrelation is preferred for intonation studies and cross-correlation for tone studies.

Figure 2 (Retrieved from Stoneham, 2011: p2, http://stonham.dyndns.org/phonetics/handouts/prosod_hndt.pdf)

5. Draw the pitch contours

• Select an area in Picture window using the pink frame
• Select "Pitch" → "draw visible pitch contour"
• See the results in Praat picture window

 Figure 3