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

彭剛(Gang Peng)

《Journal of Chinese Linguistics》 34卷1期 (2006/01) Pp. 134-154

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: F_0 height and F_0 slope, have been analyzed. Some linguistic hypotheses for tone development are advanced in the discussion of the tone balloons.

關鍵字

isochrony ； temporal compensation ； tone ； tone chart ； Mandarin ； Cantonese

並列摘要

以往關於時長與聲調分析大體都是基于少量幾個發音人的有限語料。這樣就很難區分這些研究成果到底反映的是所研究語言的一般特征，還是少數幾個發音人的個人特征。由于這個原因，它們很難被直接運用到當今的語音科技。在本文中，我們利用錄自大量發音人的大型連續語音數據庫來考查在自然語流中普通話和香港話的時長與聲調特征。我們發現：在普通話和香港話中，聲母時長和韻母時長不存在明顯的補償作用（零聲母情況除外）；香港話音節時長變動小于普通話，因而具有相對比較好的音節等時性。然後，我們依照Peterson和Barney考查元音的例子，利用聲調曲線的高度和斜率這兩個參數分析了普通話和香港話的聲調。並就聲調的發展討論了幾種語言學假設。

並列關鍵字

等時性 ； 時間補償 ； 聲調 ； 聲調圖 ； 普通話 ； 廣東話