Comparison of perceived prosodic boundaries and global characteristics of voice fundamental frequency contours in Mandarin speech

Although there have been many studies on the prosodic structure of spoken Mandarin as well as many proposals for labeling the prosody of spoken Mandarin, the labeling of prosodic boundaries in all the existing annotation systems relies on auditory perception, and lacks a direct relation to the acoustic process of prosody generation. Besides, perception-based annotation cannot ensure a high degree of consistency and reliability. In the present study, we investigate the phrasing of spoken Mandarin from the production point of view, by using an acoustic model for generating F-0 contours. The relationship between perceived prosodic boundaries at various layers and phrase commands derived from the model-based analysis of F-0 contours is then revealed. The results indicate that a perception-based prosody labeling system cannot describe the prosodic structure as accurately as the model for F-0 contour generation.