On finding word-level break-type formation rules for mandarin read speech

Abstract

This paper presents a study on exploring word-level break-type formation rules for Mandarin read speech. A 4-layer hierarchical structure with seven break types is adopted to represent the prosody of utterance. The work is based on the break-type tags labeled on a large read-speech database by the prosody labeling and modeling algorithm (PLM) proposed previously. Occurrence frequencies of seven break types for pre- and post-boundaries of several types of function words are calculated and taken as the inferred statistical break-type formation rules. Linguistic interpretations of the most likely break types occurred at pre- and post-boundaries of each function word are discussed. Some exceptions that deviate from the most likely break types are also examined.