A comment on "Mandarin tone perception: A report on a low level tone"

This paper is a comment on perception: A report on a low level tone (CAO 2010), which denies that 3 in Mandarin Chinese is a low level tone. The authors reaffirm that 3 in Mandarin Chinese is essentially a low level by reanalyzing the data from the original tests. The skewed features between high level and low level are discussed in details. It claims that the fraction of 2 in the value 214 of 3 is an on-glide due to physiological adjustment, and that of 4 is an off-glide of boundary phenomenon, thus the two half 3 and full 3 both are allophones of 3. The paper argues that phonetic experiments should be based on linguistic factors, and that phonetics should be integrated with linguistics.