The Dynamic Time Warping(DTW)algorithm is used in this experiment,as a quantitative method,to calculate the acoustic distance within the minimal pairs before and after the neutral tone change in Mandarin(EX),the distance between repeating the same non-neutral tone syllables(NIN)and the distance between repeating the same neutral tone syllables(QIN).In the meantime,the mean of EX-NIN distance(the difference between EX distance and NIN)and EX-QIN distance(the difference between EX distance and QIN)are used as a parameter to measure the amount of the acoustic distance of neutral tone sound change.It is shown that the EX distance is significantly greater than the NIN distance and the QIN distance.The NIN distance is relatively less dispersive and more stable compared with the EX and QIN distances.There are significant differences between different speakers,but the gap is not small between different words.The zero initial syllables change the most,indicating that vowels change more than consonants in a neutral tone.There also are significant differences between different two-syllable tonal combinations.The acoustic distance of the final syllable is the smallest when the initial syllable is a falling-rising tone and it is the largest when the initial syllable is a falling tone.Gender factors did not significantly affect the amount of neutral tone variation.Context has a great impact on the amount of neutral tone change.The acoustic difference of embedding words in sentences is much larger.
Dynamic Time Warping(DTW)AlgorithmAcoustic DistanceMandarinNeutral Tone
NETL
NSTL
万方数据
