Duration imitation is not mediated by phonological contrast: Evidence from a checked-unchecked tonal contrast in Taiwanese Southern Min

Phonetic imitation is mediated by phonological contrast, as evident in features such as formant, VOT and F0. However, a recent study observed that duration imitation was not mediated by phonological contrast. In contrast to other studies, duration served as a non-primary cue to the phonological contrast in this recent study. This current study further investigates duration imitation in a case where duration serves as the primary cue. We utilized the tonal contrast of T3 versus T33 in Taiwanese Southern Min (TSM), to which duration was identified as the primary cue. We created a seven-step tonal continuum between T3 and T33 by manipulating the tone durations, and recruited seventeen native TSM speakers to imitate each step as closely as they could. The bi- or uni-modality of the distribution of the imitated durations for all seven steps was analyzed using Bayesian regression models. Results showed that the imitated durations were more consistent with an unimodal distribution, suggesting that, unlike other features, the imitation of duration is not mediated by tonal contrast, whether it acts as a primary cue or not. Thus, features exhibit different resistance to phonological mediation in phonetic imitation.