Perception Of Mandarin Softly

Which one, F0contour,time, tone quality or intensity，is the mostimportant feature in perception on double syllable neutral-tone words? After a longperiod of research, this question still remains. The paper combines phonetics andpsychology experiment method together to analyze how these four factors work. Thispaper takes a matching experiment of voice stimulus and semantic to suggest myopinion on physics quality based on the results.The paper is divided into five chapters. Before the text appears, weintroduce many fundamental knowledge and the measures that earlier researchershave taken.First chapter, Experimental design and the process, mainly describes theways to synthesis sound continuums and the process of experiment. In theexperiment，tone-pattern is divided into three kinds of adjustment, that is lateralmoves，falling tone and rising tone. We changed initial fundamental frequency valueand Terminal fundamental frequency value under the three patterns.Tone quality isdivided into non-neutral and neutral quality. Duration is divided into3parts,including0.4time,0.6time and0.8time. As for Intensity, there are2types, one isdiminished10dB or20dB of the original non-neutral tone syllables, the other isincreased10dB or20dB of the changed. The experiment includes three parts,Participants mission is to determine the “matching to speech and meaning” Thereare4groups in opposite of neutral and non-neutral tone syllables, those are dongxi,meiren, maimai and bufen.Chapter two, Collection of experimental data, which integrates theexperiment data, counts the q-value ratio, and classifies the q-value ratio inaccordance with the physical factors of sound measured syllable changed in order toanalyze the data in Chapter Three.Chapter three, Analysis and discussion on the data base, We explore theeffects of pitch, tone quality, duration and intensity by comparing the q-value ratio atdifferent factors in the perception experiment.The result is that pitch plays a major role in perception, tone followed, the weakest is sound intensity. According to theProven two-factor analysis method,we can know it is not significant interactionbetween the pitch and duration, pitch and intensity, What’s more, falling tonesyllables are more vulnerable to be perceived as neutral tone syllables, when firstsyllable is third tone, posterizational syllable is easily perceived as neutral; syllableswhich close to the neutral tone is easier to be perceived as neutral; more shorter ofthe syllable length, more higher the rate of syllable perceived as a neutral tone. Morelower intensity value, it is more easier to be perceived as neutral tone.Chapter four,Conclusion. We finally summarize the result in whole articleand pointed out the shortcomings of this article.