Physiological Mandarin Speech Corpus for the International Preparatory Students in China: Design and Initial Application

Abstract:

In order to visualize pronunciation teaching and explore the law of articulation evolution in TCFL (Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language), we proposed an approach to design a physiology Mandarin speech corpus for the international preparatory students in China. Preparatory students are usually beginners to learn Mandarin, so they are selected as testers to gain the most real law of Mandarin articulation evolution. The corpus was different from an ordinary speech corpus. It consisted of not only text information (such as age, gender, nationality, mother language, Mandarin learning experience, etc.) and audio information, but also the physiological data (such as speech organs’ moving morphology). When the corpus was constructed, data were gathered by a supersonic collecting system because of its safety and low cost. In the initial experiment, 21 initial consonants, 36 simple or compound vowels and tones were tested. The results showed the corpus was significant in Mandarin teaching.

• Periodical: Advanced Materials Research (Volumes 989-994)
• Pages: 5336-5340
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/AMR.989-994.5336
• Online since: July 2014
• Authors: Xiu Ping Du, Wen Ping Zhang, Yu Fen Hou, Jian Guo Wei*
• Keywords: Mandarin, Physiological, Preparatory Students, Speech Corpus

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