Perceptually-related Acoustic-Prosodic Features of Phrase Finals in Spontaneous Speech

摘要

With the aim of automatically categorizing phrase final tones, investigations are conducted on the relationship between acoustic-prosodic parameters and perceptual tone categories. Three types of acoustic parameters are proposed: one related to pitch movement within the phrase final, one related to pitch reset prior to the phrase final, and one related to the length of the phrase final. A classification tree is used to evaluate automatic categorization of phrase final tone types, resulting in 76% correct classification for the best combination among the proposed acoustic parameters. Experiments are also conducted to verify the perceived degree of pitch change within a phrase final, and the perceived degree of pitch reset. While a good relationship is found between the perceptual scores and some of the acoustic parameters, our results also advocate a continuous rather than a categorical relationship between some of the phrase final tone-types considered.