Lee Chao-Yang
School of Hearing, Speech and Language Sciences, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio 45701, USA.
J Acoust Soc Am. 2009 Feb;125(2):1125-37. doi: 10.1121/1.3050322.
Lexical tone identification relies primarily on the processing of F0. Since F0 range differs across individuals, the interpretation of F0 usually requires reference to specific speakers. This study examined whether multispeaker Mandarin tone stimuli could be identified without cues commonly considered necessary for speaker normalization. The sa syllables, produced by 16 speakers of each gender, were digitally processed such that only the fricative and the first six glottal periods remained in the stimuli, neutralizing the dynamic F0 contrasts among the tones. Each stimulus was presented once, in isolation, to 40 native listeners who had no prior exposure to the speakers' voices. Chi-square analyses showed that tone identification accuracy exceeded chance as did tone classification based on F0 height. Acoustic analyses showed contrasts between the high- and low-onset tones in F0, duration, and two voice quality measures (F1 bandwidth and spectral tilt). Correlation analyses showed that F0 covaried with the voice quality measures and that tone classification based on F0 height also correlated with these acoustic measures. Since the same acoustic measures consistently distinguished the female from the male stimuli, gender detection may be implicated in F0 height estimation when no context, dynamic F0, or familiarity with speaker voices is available.
词汇声调识别主要依赖于基频（F0）的处理。由于不同个体的F0范围不同，对F0的解读通常需要参考特定的说话者。本研究考察了在没有通常被认为是说话者归一化所需线索的情况下，多说话者的普通话声调刺激是否能够被识别。由每种性别的16名说话者发出的“sa”音节经过数字处理，使得刺激中仅保留擦音和前六个声门周期，从而消除了声调之间动态的F0差异。每个刺激单独呈现一次给40名从未听过说话者声音的母语听众。卡方分析表明，声调识别准确率超过了随机水平，基于F0高度的声调分类也是如此。声学分析表明，高低起始声调在F0、时长和两种嗓音质量指标（F1带宽和频谱倾斜度）上存在差异。相关分析表明，F0与嗓音质量指标相关，基于F0高度的声调分类也与这些声学指标相关。由于相同的声学指标始终能够区分女性和男性的刺激，在没有语境、动态F0或对说话者声音的熟悉度的情况下，性别检测可能与F0高度估计有关。
