作者：崔乾乐
　　【Abstract】Intrinsic Fundamental Frequency （here after IF0） is a universal phonetic effect which discloses the correlation between height and fundamental frequency， whereby high vowels have higher F0 than low vowels. This paper cast light on eight monophthongs （a， ?， ?， ?， ?， u， y， i） in Kaifeng dialect. The result reflects quite clearly the significant difference in F0 between high and low vowels at higher tone. Therefore， the characteristics of IF0 do exist in Kaifeng dialect.
　　【Key words】IF0； maxF0； vowels； higher tones； Kaifeng dialect
　　1. Introduction
　　A correlation between vowel height and fundamental frequency is universal， the essential claim being that high vowels have higher intrinsic fundamental frequency （IF0） than low vowels. Accepting the presupposition that IF0 exists in tone languages， this paper intends to verify it by drawing on new evidence from eight vowels in Kaifeng dialect， which is [a， ?， ?， ?， ?， u， y， i]. If it does exist，， this experiment will add evidence to the study of IF0 in tone language as well as help the establishment of Kaifeng dialect system.
　　2. Method
　　Test Material. In Kaifeng dialect， there is a total of 8 vowels [a， ?， ?， ?， ?， u， y， i] and the vowels occur in meaningful （C） V monosyllables.
　　Speakers and Recording. Digital audio recordings were made of 20 native speakers， 10 males and 10 females. Each monosyllabe was placed in a carrier sentence. The speakers were all born and grew up in Kaifeng and even their parents were native speakers too. More importantly， all speakers have no records of hearing difficulties.
　　Analysis. A total of 960 tokens were analyzed. Due to the fact that consonants before vowels were not designed to be the same one， it is unfeasible to calculate the average F0. Under this circumstance， maximum F0 would be better so that the interference of consonants could be completely excluded. All acoustic analysis of the data were conducted in Praat （Boersma&Weenink， 2015）. With the aid of a script （Xu， 2005， predecessor of ProsodyPro， Xu， 2005-2011）， vocal pulses were marked automatically by Praat and the MaxF0 for each speaker was adjusted. Additionally， the f0 measurements were hand-checked against narrow-band spectrogram in Praat.
　　3. Results and Discussion
　　As is discussed before， height and F0 are two crucial factors of the study. So based on pilot experiment， eight monophthongs are divided into three levels of height as demonstrated in Figure 1. This is a plot of the first two formants of the eight vowels， each circle represented with a small IPA symbol. Formant 1 is on the vertical axis with increasing values going downwards， and formant 2 on the horizontal axis with increasing values from right to left. In this two-dimensional plot， F1 largely represent vowel height and F2 characterizes backness. As can be seen， there is a difference in the positions of these vowel circles and because the IF0 has nothing to do with the quality of back or front， vowels are parted into three groups horizontally marked by the dotted lines paralleled with the horizontal axis. It is apparent that the vowel circles for [?， ?， u， y， i] are located more to the upper part and vowel circles for [?， ?] are located more to the middle part of this vowel chart， relative to the circle for [a].Thus， the differentials between [?， ?， u， y， i] and [a]are the key to the study.