Fifth ISCA ITRW on Speech Synthesis June 14-16, 2004 Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Analysis of Fundamental Frequency Contours of Cantonese based on a Command-Response Model

Wentao Gu (1,2), Hiroya Fujisaki (1), Keikichi Hirose (1)

(1) The University of Tokyo, Japan
(2) Shanghai Jiaotong University, China

As a major Chinese dialect, Cantonese is well known for its complex tone system. This paper presents a preliminary analysis of the F0 contours of Cantonese using a commandresponse model. Experiments are conducted on a set of designed sentences, from which a set of appropriate tone command patterns for each tone is derived by Analysis-by- Synthesis. The model shows a high accuracy of approximation to the F0 contours of Cantonese, and hence provides a much more efficient description of continuous F0 contours than the traditional 5-scale tone letter notation system.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Gu, Wentao / Fujisaki, Hiroya / Hirose, Keikichi (2004): "Analysis of fundamental frequency contours of Cantonese based on a command-response model", In SSW5-2004, 227-228.