19,786 research outputs found
Constrained structure of ancient Chinese poetry facilitates speech content grouping
Ancient Chinese poetry is constituted by structured language that deviates from ordinary language usage [1, 2]; its poetic genres impose unique combinatory constraints on linguistic elements [3]. How does the constrained poetic structure facilitate speech segmentation when common linguistic [4, 5, 6, 7, 8] and statistical cues [5, 9] are unreliable to listeners in poems? We generated artificial Jueju, which arguably has the most constrained structure in ancient Chinese poetry, and presented each poem twice as an isochronous sequence of syllables to native Mandarin speakers while conducting magnetoencephalography (MEG) recording. We found that listeners deployed their prior knowledge of Jueju to build the line structure and to establish the conceptual flow of Jueju. Unprecedentedly, we found a phase precession phenomenon indicating predictive processes of speech segmentationâthe neural phase advanced faster after listeners acquired knowledge of incoming speech. The statistical co-occurrence of monosyllabic words in Jueju negatively correlated with speech segmentation, which provides an alternative perspective on how statistical cues facilitate speech segmentation. Our findings suggest that constrained poetic structures serve as a temporal map for listeners to group speech contents and to predict incoming speech signals. Listeners can parse speech streams by using not only grammatical and statistical cues but also their prior knowledge of the form of language
Effects of hanyu pinyin on pronunciation in learners of Chinese as a foreign language
This paper provides evidence that the hanyu pinyin representation of the phonology of Chinese affects the production of Chinese phonology in instructed learners of Chinese as a Foreign Language. Pinyin generally has a one-to-one correspondence between graphemes and phonemes, but its transcription of some Chinese rimes does not represent the main vowel. As a consequence, learners of Chinese as a Foreign Language have non-target-like phonological representations of Chinese rimes, which in turn lead to non-target-like pronunciations.
A hanzi reading-aloud task was used to elicit syllables containing the three rimes /iou/, /uei/ and /uĂâ˘n/ from final-year CFL students. Results show that learners often delete the vowels that are not represented in the pinyin transcription, but they produce the same vowels in the same rimes when the pinyin transcription represents them.
It is concluded that the pinyin orthographic input interacts with the phonological input in shaping the phonological representations and pronunciation of Chinese syllables in intermediate as well as beginner CFL learners. Language teachers should therefore be aware of the effects of the pinyin orthography
Characterizing Ranked Chinese Syllable-to-Character Mapping Spectrum: A Bridge Between the Spoken and Written Chinese Language
One important aspect of the relationship between spoken and written Chinese
is the ranked syllable-to-character mapping spectrum, which is the ranked list
of syllables by the number of characters that map to the syllable. Previously,
this spectrum is analyzed for more than 400 syllables without distinguishing
the four intonations. In the current study, the spectrum with 1280 toned
syllables is analyzed by logarithmic function, Beta rank function, and
piecewise logarithmic function. Out of the three fitting functions, the
two-piece logarithmic function fits the data the best, both by the smallest sum
of squared errors (SSE) and by the lowest Akaike information criterion (AIC)
value. The Beta rank function is the close second. By sampling from a Poisson
distribution whose parameter value is chosen from the observed data, we
empirically estimate the -value for testing the
two-piece-logarithmic-function being better than the Beta rank function
hypothesis, to be 0.16. For practical purposes, the piecewise logarithmic
function and the Beta rank function can be considered a tie.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figure
Mandarin Singing Voice Synthesis Based on Harmonic Plus Noise Model and Singing Expression Analysis
The purpose of this study is to investigate how humans interpret musical
scores expressively, and then design machines that sing like humans. We
consider six factors that have a strong influence on the expression of human
singing. The factors are related to the acoustic, phonetic, and musical
features of a real singing signal. Given real singing voices recorded following
the MIDI scores and lyrics, our analysis module can extract the expression
parameters from the real singing signals semi-automatically. The expression
parameters are used to control the singing voice synthesis (SVS) system for
Mandarin Chinese, which is based on the harmonic plus noise model (HNM). The
results of perceptual experiments show that integrating the expression factors
into the SVS system yields a notable improvement in perceptual naturalness,
clearness, and expressiveness. By one-to-one mapping of the real singing signal
and expression controls to the synthesizer, our SVS system can simulate the
interpretation of a real singer with the timbre of a speaker.Comment: 8 pages, technical repor
Nonword Repetition and Interactions Among Vocabulary, Phonotactic probability, and Phonological Awareness in Four Linguistic Groups
The current study was designed to compare the English nonword repetition accuracy in 7-year-old monolingual English, KoreanâEnglish bilingual, ChineseâEnglish bilingual, and SpanishâEnglish bilingual children. The relationships among nonword repetition accuracy, vocabulary, phonological awareness, and phonotactic probability in each group of children were also examined. The results indicated significant differences among the groupsâ accuracy of consonants and vowels by syllable length. Different correlational patterns emerged among nonword repetition accuracy, vocabulary, and phonological awareness. Theoretical and clinical implications for the use of nonword repetition tasks for children from various linguistic backgrounds are discussed
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