933 research outputs found

    Toward an integrative model of talker normalization

    Get PDF
    2015-2016 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journal201804_a bcwhAccepted ManuscriptPublishe

    Tones in whispered Cantonese

    Get PDF
    Includes bibliographical references (p. 28-30)."A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Bachelor of Science (Speech and Hearing Sciences), The University of Hong Kong, June 30, 2010."Thesis (B.Sc)--University of Hong Kong, 2010.Acoustic analysis and perceptual experiments were carried out to investigate the acoustical characteristics of tones in whispered Cantonese and to identify possible perceptual cues for tone identification. The isolated vowel /a/ embedded in a framing sentence produced by 20 (10 male and 10 female) native Cantonese speakers using modal and whispered phonation was recorded. Formant frequencies, duration and intensity of the vowels were measured from the samples using signal analysis software. During tone identification tasks, the speech samples were presented to 20 listeners who were native Cantonese speakers. The listeners were instructed to identify the tone of the target vowels in the presented sentences, based on which percent correct identification of tones was calculated. Results of the study reveal the role of second formant, duration, average intensity and intensity contours in perception of Cantonese whispered tones. Speaker’s maneuvers in production of whispered tones were also discussed.published_or_final_versionSpeech and Hearing SciencesBachelorBachelor of Science in Speech and Hearing Science

    Effects of energetic masking and informational masking on the perception of Cantonese tones in monosyllabic words

    Get PDF
    This study aimed to examine the effects of energetic masking and informational masking on Cantonese tone perception, the differential pattern that noise affects perception of the six Cantonese lexical tones, and the factors determining the effectiveness of masking on pitch perception. Four types of noise, including ten-talker babble, two-male-talker babble, two-female-talker babble, and speech-shaped noise, were used to represent conditions involving various amounts of energetic masking and informational masking. Two signal-to-noise ratios were employed for each type of noise. A quiet condition served as control. Twenty university students (8 male and 12 female) participated in the study. Each participant listened to and repeated Cantonese monosyllabic words in quiet and noise conditions respectively and the experimenter recorded the tones. The result showed that (1) Cantonese tone perception was largely prone to the combined effect of energetic masking and informational masking and it was more adversely affected by energetic masking than informational masking; (2) the effect of noise was more significant on contour tones than level tones, suggesting that, in noisy environment, noise exerted a larger effect on perception of pitch change than that of pitch level; (3) the masking effect of babble noise on pitch perception increased with the number of masker talkers.published_or_final_versionSpeech and Hearing SciencesBachelorBachelor of Science in Speech and Hearing Science

    The effect of precursor duration on tone normalization in Cantonese

    Get PDF
    Also available in print.Thesis (B.Sc)--University of Hong Kong, 2002"A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Bachelor of Science (Speech and Hearing Sciences), The University of Hong Kong, May 10, 2002."published_or_final_versionSpeech and Hearing SciencesBachelorBachelor of Science in Speech and Hearing Science

    Lexical Tone vs. F0 Effects on VOT in Cantonese

    Get PDF
    This study investigates the effects of lexical tone on the Voice Onset Time (VOT) of prevocalic stops in Cantonese. It builds on literature showing how various factors affect VOT without a resultant loss in phonological contrast and also ties in a body of research on tone and consonant interaction. The specific research questions addressed are (1) Does tone have an effect on VOT in Cantonese?; (2) If so, what kind of an effect does it have?; and (3) Is this effect purely an automatic articulatory consequence of F0 modulation or is this effect also mediated by lexical tone and hence a secondary cue that contributes towards maintaining phonological contrasts between different tonal categories? To address these questions, the speech of 6 native speakers (5 male and 1 female) of Hong Kong Cantonese was examined. A total of 80 tokens of words contrasting in tone and aspiration were analyzed for each speaker for a grand total of 480 tokens. Results from an ANOVA test showed that there is a statistically significant effect (

    The role of lexical tone in spoken word recognition of Chinese

    Get PDF
    The present study used a direct priming task in order to investigate the nature and processing of tonal information in spoken word recognition of Chinese. Two experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, prime-target pairs contrasted in terms of tonal and segmental overlap. Experiment 1 replicated the first experiment of C.-Y. Lee's (2007) study but with a significant modification that balanced tonal information in prime-target pairs. Forty-eight monosyllabic Mandarin target words were paired with four types of primes in which prime and target were identical (e.g., bo1- bo1), shared only segmental information (e.g., bo1 -bo2), shared only tonal information (e.g., bo1 -zhua1) or were unrelated (e.g., bo1 -man3). Experiment 2 extended the prime-target paradigm to include minimal segmental overlap in onset and in offset portion. Forty-eight monosyllabic Mandarin target words were paired with four types of primes in which prime and target were identical (e.g., bo1- bo1), shared tonal and only onset segmental information (e.g., bo1 -bin1), shared tonal and only offset segmental information (e.g., bo1 -po1) or were unrelated (e.g., bo1 -man3). The results of Experiment 1 showed that the facilitation effect was found when the prime-target pairs were identical or segmental structure overlapped compared to conditions where the prime-target pairs only overlapped in tone or were unrelated. Effects of similarity of tone across prime-target segmental pairs were also analyzed. The results of Experiment 2 showed that the facilitation effect was only found when the prime-target pairs were identical. Partial segmental overlap in conjunction with tone resulted in inhibition compared to an unrelated control. Together, these data indicate that segmental information can facilitate word recognition, with segmental information carrying more weight than tonal information in the processing of spoken Chinese

    Perception and production of lexical tones by young children

    Get PDF
    Thesis (B.Sc)--University of Hong Kong, 2006."A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Bachelor of Science (Speech and Hearing Sciences), The University of Hong Kong, June 30, 2006."Also available in print.published_or_final_versionSpeech and Hearing SciencesBachelorBachelor of Science in Speech and Hearing Science

    Pre-low raising in Cantonese and Thai: Effects of speech rate and vowel quantity

    Get PDF
    Although pre-low raising (PLR) has been extensively studied as a type of contextual tonal variation, its underlying mechanism is barely understood. This paper explored the effects of phonetic vs phonological duration on PLR in Cantonese and Thai and examined how speech rate and vowel quantity interact with its realization in these languages, respectively. The results for Cantonese revealed that PLR always occurred before a large falling excursion (i.e., high-low); in other tonal contexts, it was observed more often in faster speech. In the Thai corpus, PLR also occurred before large falling excursions, and there was more PLR in short vowels. These results are discussed in terms of possible accounts of the underlying mechanism of PLR

    Tone perception of Cantonese-speaking children with cochlear implant

    Get PDF
    Also available in print."A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Bachelor of Science (Speech and Hearing Sciences), The University of Hong Kong, May 10, 2000."Thesis (B.Sc)--University of Hong Kong, 2000published_or_final_versionSpeech and Hearing SciencesBachelorBachelor of Science in Speech and Hearing Science

    Perception of linguistic pitch in Cantonese-English bilingual speakers

    Get PDF
    This study investigated the perception of linguistic pitch in Cantonese-English bilingual speakers. Two age groups of bilingual speakers (age 10-13 and age 20-23) were recruited and attended the experiment which included three sessions: Cantonese lexical tone perception test, English lexical stress perception test, the mixed mode test of lexical tone and lexical stress. The stimuli were fifty-five CVCV non-words with fifteen different tone contrasts in lexical tone test, and with initial stressed or final stressed in lexical stress test. The results showed that adults performed significantly better than the children in both lexical tone and lexical stress perception. Children had similar performance in tone and stress perception but adults performed better in stress perception than tone perception. The tone contrasts of mid level-low level, and high rising-low rising were the most difficult to discriminate for both children and adults. Findings suggest that bilingual speakers used the same perception strategy in perceiving linguistic pitch of lexical stress and lexical tone and the language experience still affected and improved the suprasegmental acquisition after age of 10-13.published_or_final_versionSpeech and Hearing SciencesBachelorBachelor of Science in Speech and Hearing Science
    corecore