A Study On Mongolian Syllable Duration Based On Reading Aloud Corpu

From the perspective of pronunciation,sound length depends on the duration of the pronunciation action.The duration of segments,syllables,words and sentences varies with many factors.And in some languages,from a phonological point of view,sound length is one of the key factors for distinguishing meaning,as well as one of the important prosodic features.Therefore,the issue of sound length has been widely concerned by phoneticians and phonologists.Syllable is the basic unit of pronunciation and a key unit in the sound system,therefore,its duration research has important theoretical and practical value.Previous studies on Mongolian syllables mainly focused on syllable division,syllable structure,syllable types,and the corresponding relationship between written and spoken syllables,Contrary to which the syllable duration are merely studied.A little Existing research in this field only stays on the study of the isolated pronunciation words.At the same time,with the popularization of phonetic experimental research methods,Mongolian prosodic research has been deepened gradually.However,there are not many research results,and very few have established detailed natural sentence parameter databases for systematic research.Therefore,systematically studying on the duration of Mongolian syllables and the lengthening and shortening patterns of syllable durations both in isolated pronunciation words and natural sentences will not only help to deepen the study of Mongolian syllables,and provide a theoretical basis for Mongolian language engineering,but also provide insights into the commonality of language prosodic features.Based on a large number of read speech,this paper uses experimental phonetics theory and statistical methods to study the characteristics of syllable duration in isolated pronunciation words and natural sentences in Mongolian.First,based on the corpus of isolated pronunciation words,the effects of the quality and number of phonemes in a syllable,the position of a syllable in a word,and the structure of a syllable on the duration of a syllable are explored.Based on the phoneme duration data in syllables of isolated pronunciation words,the length index and grade of phonemes and syllables were generated,and the continuous variable(physical duration)was converted into a categorical variable(length index).Secondly,based on the data of syllable duration and length,the influence of factors such as intra-word position,pause,prosodic unit boundary,and sentence stress on the syllable duration and the stretching degree of the syllable duration are described and analyzed.The main conclusions drawn in this paper are as follows:1.In Mongolian isolated pronunciation words,phoneme quality and position,syllable number and word position are the key factors that affect syllable duration.The syllables of isolated pronunciation words are the longest at the end of the word,the shortest in the middle of the word,and medium in length at the beginning of the word.The syllable length of monosyllable words has a large expansion and contraction,and the final syllable of polysyllable words is relatively long due to the word boundary effect,but it is not as long as the syllable length of monosyllable words.2.The duration of syllables in Mongolian natural sentences is significantly shorter than that in isolated words.In the reading sentences,the syllables are obviously lengthened before the silent pause(sp),before and after the voiced pause(P),at the boundary between prosodic phrases and intonation phrases,at the end of sentences,and at the beginning of stressed words.Moreover,as in isolated words,the boundary effects are also operant in reading sentences.That is,the syllables at the borders of prosodic units and the adjacent syllables at the borders of pauses are obviously lengthened.3.In the reading sentence,the degree of syllable extension can reach 50%,that is,the syllable can be extended to 1.5 times of the original duration.And The degree of syllable shortening is 35%,that is,the syllables are shortened by one-third of the original duration on average.Among them,the syllables of monosyllabic words,especially the syllables composed of a single vowel,extend more freely,of which the duration will prolong to tow times of the original one.The lengthening of syllables in sentences is mostly manifested as lengtheing of phonemes at syllable boundaries.