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With Mandarin Chinese being a tonal language, tone articulation is a significant parameter for the intelligibility and quality of spoken Chinese. The neutral tone, or fifth tone of Mandarin Chinese, stands apart from the other four lexical tones because its prosodic properties are characterized by variability, depending primarily on the tone of the preceding syllable. Although neutral tone syllables are as frequent as the other four lexical tones in everyday spoken language, the acquisition of the neutral tone is challenging even for native-speaking children. The aim of the study is to capture the acoustic properties of the neutral tone as produced by intermediate learners and to highlight the challenges that intermediate Mandarin learners face in the production of the neutral tone. To achieve this, the study engaged seven volunteer Chinese learners (four females and three males) of intermediate level and a control group of two volunteer native speakers (one female and one male), who recorded themselves pronouncing a given speech material. The speech material included disyllabic words of three kinds: four reduplicative words, four words followed by the particle 的, and four words with the suffix 子. The initial syllable of each disyllabic word of each category bore one of the four primary lexical tones. All words were uttered both as isolated words and within sentences. The recordings underwent acoustic analysis utilizing the Praat software to extract the pitch contour and duration. No significant differences were observed between female and male learners in the production of the neutral tone. The learners exhibited higher variability in producing the neutral tone compared to the four tones of the initial syllables of the words. Regarding the pitch contour, the greatest divergences from the native speakers were observed in the neutral tone after T2 and T3. Context did not seem to affect the learners’ production of the neutral tone. Regarding duration, the learners showed a significantly higher duration ratio of the T0 versus the initial syllable for the T2T0 and T4T0 word categories, especially when the words were uttered within sentences. For the T3T0 category, the learners produced a lower duration ratio compared to the native speakers. The results indicate that, while intermediate learners of Mandarin generally demonstrate a basic alignment with native speaker patterns in T0 production, notable divergences seem to persist.

普通话是一种声调语言，声调是影响汉语口语交流的重要因素。普通话的轻声，即第五声，与其他四个声调不同，因为韵律特性不是固定的，而是主要受到前一个音节的声调的影响。尽管轻声音节在日常口语中极为常见，但是即使对母语儿童来说，习得轻声时也面临一定的困难。本研究的目的是记录并分析普通话中级学习者发出的轻声的声学特性，并将其与母语者的轻声进行比较。为此，我们记录了七名中级普通话学习者和两名母语人士对特定语音材料的发音数据。这些语音材料包括三种类型的双音节词：四个叠字词、四个带有助词“的”的单音节词、和四个带“子”后缀的双音节词。 每个双字词的第一个字都带有普通话四种主要声调之一, 第二个字是轻声。这些双音节词的发音数据包括两个语境：单独发音和在句子中发音。通过 Praat软件对录音进行声学分析，本研究提取了轻声的音高轮廓和时长数据。在轻声的发音上，男性女性之间没有观察到显著差异。与双音节词中第一个音节的四个声调中相比，普通话学习者在轻声的发音上显示出较高的变异性。特别值得注意的是，在二声和三声之后的轻声发音上，学习者与母语者之间的差异最为明显。此外，语境对于学生的轻声发音影响并不显著。在轻声的时长方面，学生在 T2T0（二声-轻声）和 T4T0（四声-轻声）词类中表现出显著更高的轻声音节与首音节的时长比率，尤其是在句子中的发音更为明显。然而，在 T3T0（三声-轻声）词类中，与母语者相比，学习者的持时长比率较低。综上所述，，中级普通话学习者在轻声发音方面大体遵循母语者的模式，但仍存在若干显著差异。