Perception of Word Tones in Mandarin Whispered Speech

國語耳語語料中聲調之感知研究

謝國平(John Kwock-Ping Tse)

《教學與研究》 18期 (1996/12) Pp. 227-244

https://doi.org/10.6250/TR.1996.18.8

摘要

聲調的主要聲學特性為語音的基頻，而基頻則取決於發音時聲帶之振動次數。在耳語（whisper）時，聲帶不振動，並無基頻存在。因此，在耳語中，聲調的感知理應相當困難，而其研究亦可顯示基頻在語音感知中的重要性。然而在文獻中，對聲調在耳語中的感知研究不多，且有爭議之未決問題則不少。本研究重點在於以實驗方式探討這些未決問題中之二：（1）聲調在國語耳語語料中感知的正確度如何；（2）國語的四聲是否有感知顯著性主的差異。（換言之，在耳語中某些聲調是否比其他聲調更易於感知）。實駿結果顯示：（1）在耳語中，如無語境的幫助，聲調的感知相當困難，受試者只能正確辨識54%的測試聲調。這發現與Jensen（1958）的研究結果相反，但與Miller（1961）的實驗結果相符，顯示在以耳語說出的語料中，並無多少聲調的聲學線索存在。（2）在國語的耳語語料中，第二聲（陽平）及第三聲（上聲）要比其他兩聲更容易被感知；惟對這種感知顯著性上的差異，在本研究的測試語料中並未能發現任何足以解釋此種差異的相關聲學參數。基於上述發現，本文除對耳語語料的聲學特性及其聲調的感知加以討論外，更提出進一步研究的可行方向。

關鍵字

耳語 ； 基頻 ； 感知顯著性

並列摘要

The recognition of word tones in whispered speech may reveal the significance of fundamental frequency variation in speech sound perception. However, relatively few studies have been done on this aspect of tone perception and many issues remain unresolved. Among them are the question of how well whispered word tones can be recognized and the question of whether or not some tones are perceptually more salient than others. The present study attempts to address these two questions through a perception experiment. Our findings suggest that when fundamental frequency variation is absent, as in whispered speech, perception of word tones is greatly hampered if proper and larger linguistic contexts are also excluded, suggesting that not much word tone is transmitted in whispered speech. This is contraditory to Jensen's (1958) finding and provides some supporting evidence to Miller's (1961) finding, thus bringing some additional evidence to the answer and solution of the first question. As for the second question, we have significant findings which show that Tone 2 and Tone 3 in Mandarin are perceptually more salient in whispered speech; but we fail to find any acoustic correlates in the test items to account for this aspect of saliency. In the light of these results, we suggest that further studies be done to explore the possibility of the existience of other kinds of acoustic correlates and replications of the present experiment be carried out in order to seek better explanations for the perceptual saliency of Tone 2 and Tone 3 .in Mandarin whispered speech.

並列關鍵字

whisper ； fundamental frequency ； perceptual saliency