In the present study,"contraction"refers to the reduction of the number of syllables or phonemes in speech flow.Investigating contractions can contribute to validating diachronic sound change hypotheses,predicting potential phonetic changes,enriching the fundamentals of speech perception,and enhancing the naturalness of speech synthesis.Currently,research on contractions in spontaneous Mandarin speech is relatively scarce,and the influence of phonetic factors on contractions remains to be explored.This study meticulously analyzes the phonetic and speech manifestations of contractions in Mandarin speech flow.Firstly,based on two ten-minute excerpts of natural conversations,the influence of phonetic features on contractions in Mandarin and Taiwanese"Guoyu"is compared.Then,interpersonal stability of initial consonant contractions is verified through designed corpus.The results show disparity between that the effects of phonetic features on contractions in Mandarin and Taiwanese"Guoyu".While open syllables are more prone to contraction and syllables with aspirated voiceless initials are less likely to contract in both varieties,the contraction rate is lower in Mandarin and syllables with zero initial in Mandarin are less likely to undergo contraction.Initial consonant contractions exhibit certain cross-linguistic commonalities:velar and alveolar consonants are more susceptible to contraction,while labial consonants are less likely to contract.
维普
万方数据