TEMPORAL AND TONAL ASPECTS OF CHINESE SYLLABLES: A CORPUS-BASED COMPARATIVE STUDY OF MANDARIN AND CANTONESE
漢語音節時長與聲調分析:基于語料庫的普通話和香港話的比較研究
Gang Peng 彭剛
Abstract 摘要
Previous studies on temporal and tonal aspects of languages are usually based on limited data from a small number of subjects. It is difficult to know whether these findings can really represent the general temporal and tonal aspects of continuous speech, or just the speech of the specific subjects involved. Because of this difficulty it may not be appropriate to directly apply these findings to current speech technologies.
In this study, large vocabulary continuous speech databases for Mandarin and Cantonese, recorded from large populations of subjects, are used to investigate the temporal and tonal aspects of syllables in continuous speech. Our findings include the following. No obvious temporal compensation effect has been found between the syllable initial (null initial being the sole exception) and the syllable final; Cantonese syllables exhibit less variation than Mandarin, achieving better isochrony.
Then, following the example of the vowel balloons pioneered by Peterson and Barney, the tones of Mandarin and Cantonese with two parameters: Fo height and Fo slope, have been analyzed. Some linguistic hypotheses for tone development are advanced in the discussion of the tone balloons.
Subject Keywords 關鍵詞
isochrony 等時性 temporal compensation 時間補償 tone 聲調 tone chart 聲調圖 Mandarin 普通話 Cantonese 廣東話
Journal of Chinese Linguistics volume 34 (ISSN 0091-3723)
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