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Neutral Tone in Mandarin: Representation and Interaction with Utterance-level Prosody
In Standard Mandarin, there are syllables that do not carry any of the four citation tones (T1: High-level tone, T2: Mid-rising tone, T3: Low-convex tone and T4: High-falling tone), and they are said to have a neutral tone (NT). These syllables are usually shorter, lighter, prosodically grouped with the preceding CT-bearing syllables. These characteristics of NT have led to a prevailing view that it has no underlying phonological specification. However, research has focused more on how the surface pitch variations of NT are realized rather than the underlying representation of NT.
In contrast, morphological, sociolinguistic and diachronic work on NT has suggested that NT may not be a homogeneous entity. In this thesis, I provide acoustic and psycholinguistic evidence that there are two types of NT, Intrinsic NT and Derived NT. Intrinsic NT refers to morphemes that were lexicalized as tone-deleted, unstressed syllables even before the formation of the four CTs of modern Mandarin. Derived NT refers to morphemes derived from the CTs via stress-related tone-deletion.
In Part A, the phonological representation of Intrinsic and Derived NT is explored through two production and two processing experiments. The results show that Intrinsic NT is likely to have an underspecified tonal target while Derived NTs are underlyingly CTs. In addition, both subtypes of NT are metrically light, unlike heavy CTs.
Part B explores the interaction between NTs and utterance-level prosody in production and perception experiments. NT-bearing syllables have lengthening patterns under focus similar to CT-bearing syllables, in contrast to the realization of unstressed syllables in English. In perception, the identification of intonation (Statement vs. Question) on Intrinsic NT was similar to Derived NT. When compared to CTs, the NTs elicit less bias towards question than T4, and higher accuracy than T2, which may result from their simpler surface representations.CHINA Scholarship COUNCIL (CSC) and Cambridge Trus
Tones in Zhangzhou: Pitch and Beyond
This study draws on various approaches—field linguistics;
auditory and acoustic phonetics; and statistics—to explore and
explain the nature of Zhangzhou tones, an under-described
Southern Min variety. Several original findings emerged from the
analyses of the data from 21 speakers. The realisations of
Zhangzhou tones are multidimensional. The single parameter of
pitch/F0 is not sufficient to characterise tonal contrasts in
either monosyllabic or polysyllabic settings in Zhangzhou.
Instead, various parameters, including pitch/F0, duration, vowel
quality, voice quality, and syllable coda type, interact in a
complicated but consistent way to code tonal distinctions.
Zhangzhou has eight tones rather than seven tones as proposed in
previous studies. This finding resulted from examining the
realisations of diverse parameters across three different
contexts—isolation, phrase-initial, and phrase-final—, rather
than classifying tones in citation and in terms of the
preservation of Middle Chinese tonal categories. Tonal contrasts
in Zhangzhou can be neutralised across different linguistic
contexts. Identifying the number of tonal contrasts based simply
on tonal realisations in the citation environment is not
sufficient. Instead, examining tonal realisations across
different linguistic contexts beyond monosyllables is imperative
for understanding the nature of tone.
Tone sandhi in Zhangzhou is syntactically relevant. The tone
sandhi domain is not phonologically determined but rather is
aligned with a syntactic phrase XP. Within a given XP, the
realisations of the tones at non-phrase-final positions undergo
alternation phonologically and phonetically. Nevertheless, the
alterations are sensitive only to the phrase boundaries and are
not affected by the internal structure of syntactic phrases.
Tone sandhi in Zhangzhou is phonologically inert but phonetically
sensitive. The realisations of Zhangzhou tones in disyllabic
phrases are not categorically affected by their surrounding tones
but are phonetically sensitive to surrounding environments. For
instance, the pitch/F0 onsets of phrase-final tones are largely
sensitive to pitch/F0 offsets of preceding tones and appear to
have diverse variants.
The mappings between Zhangzhou citation and disyllabic tones are
morphologically conditioned. Phrase-initial tones are largely not
related to the citation tones at either the phonological or the
phonetic level while phrase-final tones are categorically related
to the citation tones but phonetically are not quite the same
because of predictable sensitivity to surrounding environments.
Each tone in Zhangzhou can be regarded as a single morpheme
having two alternating allomorphs (tonemes), one for
non-phrase-final variants and one for variants in citation and
phrase-final contexts, both of which are listed in the mental
lexicon of native Zhangzhou speakers but are phonetically distant
on the surface.
In summary, the realisations of Zhangzhou tones are
multidimensional, involving a variety of segmental and
suprasegmental parameters. The interactions of Zhangzhou tones
are complicated, involving phonetics, phonology, syntax, and
morphology. Neutralisation of Zhangzhou tonal contrasts occurs
across different contexts, including citation, phrase-final, and
non-phrase-final. Thus, researchers must go beyond pitch to
understand tone thoroughly as a phenomenon in Southern Min
Automatic Pronunciation Assessment -- A Review
Pronunciation assessment and its application in computer-aided pronunciation
training (CAPT) have seen impressive progress in recent years. With the rapid
growth in language processing and deep learning over the past few years, there
is a need for an updated review. In this paper, we review methods employed in
pronunciation assessment for both phonemic and prosodic. We categorize the main
challenges observed in prominent research trends, and highlight existing
limitations, and available resources. This is followed by a discussion of the
remaining challenges and possible directions for future work.Comment: 9 pages, accepted to EMNLP Finding
Cognitive factors in perception and imitation of Thai tones by Mandarin versus Vietnamese speakers
The thesis investigates how native language phonological and phonetic factors affect non-native lexical tone perception and imitation, and how cognitive factors, such as memory load and stimulus variability (talker and vowel context variability), bias listeners to a phonological versus phonetic mode of perception/imitation. Two perceptual experiments and one imitation experiment were conducted with Thai tones as the stimuli and with Mandarin and Vietnamese listeners, who had no experience with Thai (i.e., naive listeners/imitators). The results of the perceptual experiments (Chapters 5 and 6) showed phonological effects as reflected in assimilation types (Categorised vs. UnCategorised assimilation) and phonetic effects indicated by percent choice and goodness ratings in tone assimilation, largely in line with predictions based on the Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM: Best, 1995). In addition, phonological assimilation types and phonological overlap of the contrasts affected their discrimination in line with predictions based on PAM. The thesis research has revealed the influence of cognitive factors on native language influences in perception and imitation of non-native lexical tones, which contribute differently to different tasks. The findings carry implications for current non-native speech perception theories. The fact that non-native tone imitation deviations can be traced back to native phonological and phonetic influences on perception supports and provides new insights about perception-production links in processing non-native tones. The findings uphold the extrapolation of PAM and ASP principles to non-native tone perception and imitation, indicating that both native language phonological and phonetic influences and their modulation by cognitive factors hold implications for non-native speech perception/learning theories, as well as for second language instruction
Articulation in time : Some word-initial segments in Swedish
Speech is both dynamic and distinctive at the same time. This implies a certain contradiction which has entertained researchers in phonetics and phonology for decades. The present dissertation assumes that articulation behaves as a function of time, and that we can find phonological structures in the dynamical systems. EMA is used to measure mechanical movements in Swedish speakers. The results show that tonal context affects articulatory coordination. Acceleration seems to divide the movements of the jaw and lips into intervals of postures and active movements. These intervals are affected differently by the tonal context. Furthermore, a bilabial consonant is shorter if the next consonant is also made with the lips. A hypothesis of a correlation between acoustic segment duration and acceleration is presented. The dissertation highlights the importance of time for how speech ultimately sounds. Particularly significant is the combination of articulatory timing and articulatory duration
Proceedings of the fifth International Conference on Asian Geolinguistics
This volume contains papers presented at the fifth International Conference on Asian Geolinguistics (ICAG) held at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, VNU, Ha Noi, Vietnam, from 4 to 5 May, 2023
Analyzing Prosody with Legendre Polynomial Coefficients
This investigation demonstrates the effectiveness of Legendre polynomial coefficients representing prosodic contours within the context of two different tasks: nativeness classification and sarcasm detection. By making use of accurate representations of prosodic contours to answer fundamental linguistic questions, we contribute significantly to the body of research focused on analyzing prosody in linguistics as well as modeling prosody for machine learning tasks. Using Legendre polynomial coefficient representations of prosodic contours, we answer prosodic questions about differences in prosody between native English speakers and non-native English speakers whose first language is Mandarin. We also learn more about prosodic qualities of sarcastic speech. We additionally perform machine learning classification for both tasks, (achieving an accuracy of 72.3% for nativeness classification, and achieving 81.57% for sarcasm detection). We recommend that linguists looking to analyze prosodic contours make use of Legendre polynomial coefficients modeling; the accuracy and quality of the resulting prosodic contour representations makes them highly interpretable for linguistic analysis
Tonal split and laryngeal contrast of onset consonant in Lili Wu Chinese
Descriptive and Comparative Linguistic
The Phonetics of VOT and Tone Interaction in Cantonese
This study investigates the possible effects of lexical tone on Voice Onset Time (VOT) in Cantonese, a tonal language with a two-way contrast between short-lag (voiceless unaspirated) and long-lag (voiceless aspirated) stops. VOT was measured as the time interval between the stop burst and the onset of voicing for the following vowel. The recorded speech of 6 native speakers each producing 10 repetitions of 20 different words contrasting in aspiration and tone was analyzed. Tokens from each individual subject were divided into two sets for the purpose of comparison. The first set involved a comparison between the effects of a high-level 55 tone and a mid-level 33 tone. Results showed no significant VOT differences unless aspirated and unaspirated stops were examined separately. In this case, only the aspirated stops showed a significant difference with the 33 tone associated with higher VOT. The second set of stimuli compared the effects of 4 different phonemic tone categories (55, 25, 33, and 21) on VOT. Results show that words beginning with a lower tonal onset (and thus the 25 and 21 tones) correlated with higher VOT than words beginning with a higher tonal onset (the 55 and 33 tones)
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