Ho, Pui Kwan. / "November 2010." / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2011. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 68-75). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Acknowledgements --- p.i / Abstract --- p.ii / List of figures --- p.vi / List of tables --- p.viii / Abbreviations --- p.ix / Chapter Chapter 1. --- Introduction / Chapter 1.1. --- Overview --- p.1 / Chapter 1.2. --- Thesis organization --- p.6 / Chapter Chapter 2. --- Background / Chapter 2.1. --- Brain structure and its functional organization --- p.8 / Chapter 2.2. --- Introduction to lateralization investigation techniques --- p.13 / Chapter 2.2.1. --- Lesion studies and Wada test --- p.13 / Chapter 2.2.2. --- Dichotic listening --- p.14 / Chapter 2.2.3. --- Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) --- p.15 / Chapter 2.2.4. --- Electroencephalography(EEG) & event-related potential(ERP) --- p.16 / Chapter 2.2.5. --- Other brain imaging techniques --- p.20 / Chapter 2.2.6. --- Comparing different brain-imaging techniques in this study --- p.20 / Chapter 2.3. --- Literature review and the current work --- p.21 / Chapter 2.3.1 --- "The functional and acoustic ""dichotomy""" --- p.22 / Chapter 2.3.2. --- Studies on lateralization of tones without linguistic context --- p.25 / Chapter 2.3.3. --- Studies on lexical tone lateralization --- p.27 / Chapter 2.3.4. --- The current work ´ؤ aim and hypothesis --- p.34 / Chapter Chapter 3. --- Methodology / Chapter 3.1. --- Stimuli --- p.36 / Chapter 3.2. --- Subject --- p.41 / Chapter 3.3. --- Task design --- p.41 / Chapter 3.4. --- ERP recording and data processing --- p.44 / Chapter Chapter 4. --- Results and discussions / Chapter 4.1. --- Behavioural data analysis --- p.46 / Chapter 4.2. --- ERP data analysis --- p.48 / Chapter 4.3. --- Discussions --- p.52 / Chapter Chapter 5. --- Further discussions / Chapter 5.1. --- Is lateralization of lexical tone language-specific? --- p.57 / Chapter 5.2. --- Toward a model of speech lateralization --- p.59 / Chapter 5.3. --- An implication on tone feature systems --- p.60 / Chapter Chapter 6. --- Conclusion / Chapter 6.1. --- Conclusion --- p.65 / Chapter 6.2. --- Future work --- p.67 / References --- p.68 / Appendix / Chapter A.1. --- Edinburgh handedness test --- p.76 / Chapter A.2. --- Handedness scores --- p.77

 In tone languages, tones, in addition to phonemes, are used to differentiate meanings. The tone of a word changes its meaning. This gives rise to a question regarding vocal music in such languages: does the melodic contour have to depend upon the lexical tones of the text so as to enhance the understanding of the text? This question has motivated a number of studies to examine the relationship between lexical tones and melody in different vocal genres of different tone languages. Yet a satisfactory answer is still missing. While existing studies reveal that the degree of conformity between speech tone and melody varies according to the genre as well as the language, some genres of Cantonese vocal music, such as Cantonese opera and Canto-pop, show a strikingly higher degree of tone-melody correspondence. Taking Canto-pop as the focus, the present study seeks to investigate the principles of tone-melody mapping—the underlying rules which govern the realization and perception of Cantonese speech tones in sung melody. It also seeks to gain a deeper understanding about how the constraints of speech tones affect the text-music interaction and why the preservation of speech tones is particularly prominent in this genre. Drawing insights from musicology, linguistics and psychology, the thesis presents an interdisciplinary research that casts new light on the subject of tone-melody relationship—the relationship between speech tones and sung melody in vocal music. It is found that the correspondence between musical intervals and tonal transitions in Cantonese speech can be crucial to tone perception in sung melody. But there are also occasions where the speech tones are still perceived correctly despite the occurrences of physical tone-melody mismatch, largely on account of the tonal, melodic, syntactic and semantic context. While a misperception of the speech tones may not always necessarily lead to a miscomprehension of the lyrics, it is still an aesthetic requirement for Cantopop to maintain perfect tone-melody mapping. This requirement even has an influence on the creative process of Cantopop. / published_or_final_version / Music / Master / Master of Philosophy

This PhD research aims at revealing the underlying complexity of the grammar of tone-melody mapping in Cantonese pop music. While linguists have shown a growing interest and invested painstaking effort in finding out whether lexical tones and musical melody interact in vocal music, the attention of these scholars mainly focuses on whether a lexical item remains intelligible to speakers of the given language when the tonal integrity is not preserved in the song. Others are interested in quantifying the degree of tone-melody correspondence and in carrying out cross-linguistic comparisons. The majority of such research studies fail to unravel the details of how tone and melody interact. This research challenges the methodologies and assumptions made in some previous studies that fail to account for the discrepancy between structural and perceptual ‘correspondence’ or ‘mismatch’. The notions of ‘correspondence’ and ‘mismatch’ are revisited and redefined from a perceptual perspective – a ‘perfect match’ refers to the mapping between a melodic transition and a tonal target transition that is satisfactorily accepted by native speakers of the language, whereas a ‘mismatch’ refers to a tone-melody pairing that sounds awkward to the native ear, whether or not the string of syllables are comprehensible, ambiguous or unintelligible when set to the song. Through conducting perception tests, songs are grouped into two main categories for two different purposes – the songs without perceptual mismatch are used for a profound analysis of the well-formed mapping patterns at the abstract level. The most frequently attested correspondence pattern concerns the pairing between tonal target transition and melodic transition progressing in the same direction. The directionality constraint is satisfied in about 80% of the cases. It is also revealed that level tonal target sequences can be mapped to non-level melodies and still remain well-formed. This mapping, however, is strictly conditional and only occurs when licensed. The other group of songs are those in which native speakers have identified cases of perceptual mismatch. By examining the ill-formed examples, other mapping constraints are uncovered – the interval constraint requires that the pitch distance of a melodic transition be comparable to that of the corresponding tonal target transition. The mapping criterion is therefore more like a ‘vector’, obliging the two transitions to agree not only in direction but also in slope. The Hidden Structure Alignment constraint is the third important mapping constraint discovered that succeeds in providing solutions to account for unusual pairings or mismatches that directionality and interval fail to explain. In order that a tonal target transition match a melodic transition, the hidden or phonetically unexpressed semitones on both tonal and melodic scales should be aligned to or absent from the same edge. This constraint is helpful to account for the extremely restricted mapping patterns at the song-final cadence. By investigating a large corpus of Cantonese pop songs written by various lyricists, this research proposes a detailed description of the grammar of Cantonese tone-melody mapping in terms of the interaction of the directionality, interval and hidden structure alignment constraints. / published_or_final_version / Linguistics / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

by Cheng Yat Ho. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1991. / Bibliography: leaves 106-108. / Chapter Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter Chapter 2 --- Preliminary Considerations --- p.8 / Chapter 2.1 --- Tone System of Cantonese --- p.8 / Chapter 2.2 --- Tone Classification Systems --- p.14 / Chapter 2.3 --- Design of a Speech Corpus --- p.17 / Chapter Chapter 3 --- Feature Parameters for Tone Classification --- p.22 / Chapter 3.1 --- Methodology --- p.22 / Chapter 3.2 --- Endpoint Detection and Time Alignment --- p.23 / Chapter 3.3 --- Pitch --- p.27 / Chapter 3.3.1 --- Pitch Profile Extraction --- p.28 / Chapter 3.3.2 --- Evaluation of Pitch Profile --- p.33 / Chapter 3.3.3 --- Feature Parameters Derived from Pitch Profile --- p.40 / Chapter 3.4 --- Duration --- p.46 / Chapter 3.5 --- Energy --- p.49 / Chapter 3.5.1 --- Energy Profile Extraction --- p.49 / Chapter 3.5.2 --- Evaluation of Energy Profile --- p.50 / Chapter 3.6 --- Summary --- p.54 / Chapter Chapter 4 --- Implementation of the Tone Classification System --- p.56 / Chapter 4.1 --- Intrinsic Pitch Estimation --- p.59 / Chapter 4.2 --- The Classifier --- p.63 / Chapter 4.2.1 --- Neural Network --- p.64 / Chapter 4.2.2 --- Post-Processing Unit --- p.74 / Chapter Chapter 5 --- Performance Evaluation on the Tone Classification System --- p.76 / Chapter 5.1 --- Single Speaker Tone Classification --- p.77 / Chapter 5.2 --- Multi-Speaker and Speaker Independent Tone Classification --- p.82 / Chapter 5.2.1 --- Classification with no Phonetic Information --- p.83 / Chapter 5.2.2 --- Classification with Known Final Consonants --- p.88 / Chapter 5.3 --- Confidence Improvement of the Recognition Results --- p.95 / Chapter 5.4 --- Summary --- p.101 / Chapter Chapter 6 --- Conclusions and Discussions --- p.102 / References --- p.106 / Chapter Appendix A --- Vocabulary of the Speech Corpus --- p.A1-A4 / Chapter Appendix B --- Statistics of the Pitch Profiles --- p.Bl-Bl5 / Chapter Appendix C --- Statistics of the Energy Profiles --- p.Cl-Cl1 / RESULTS

Temporal envelope and periodicity components (TEPC) offer robust cues for speech recognition, even spectral information in the speech signal are not readily available. Many previous studies investigated the contribution of TEPC on speech recognition in English, but very few of them investigated the contribution of TEPC on tonal language and particularly on lexical tone recognition. Lexical tones encode lexical and grammatical meanings of words in tonal languages, and are essentially represented by the fundamental frequency and its low-order harmonics. Listeners with cochlear hearing loss have reduced frequency selectivity, causing much broader auditory filters than normal hearing listeners. Spectral cues in the speech signal are much reduced and hearing-impaired listeners have to rely more on TEPC for speech understanding. TEPC extracted from different frequency regions do not necessarily contribute equally for speech recognition. These frequency-specific TEPC contributions vary among different types of speech materials. Such investigation has not been conducted thoroughly for lexical tone yet. / This high frequency TEPC advantage maintained in conditions where the TEPC were carried in noise bands sharing the same frequency region as the frequency region where the TPEC were extracted, or in conditions where TEPC extracted from different frequency regions were carried by fixed high frequency noise bands, even when only a single noise band was used as the carrier. Consistent results were obtained using different lexical tone testing materials. TEPC extracted from the male voice than the female one consistently yielded better performance. Although hearing-impaired listeners performed not as good as their normal hearing peers, they were able to utilize the available TEPC information significantly particularly when TEPC from high frequencies were available. The high frequency TEPC advantage can be explained by the bandwidth of the carrier. Certain critical TEPC modulations for lexical tone recognition are believed to reside only in the high frequency regions but not the low frequency ones. Signal processing methods that can preserve or enhance TEPC in the high frequency regions in the speech signal may improve lexical tone recognition or even overall speech recognition of hearing-impaired listeners. / This research project was aimed at investigating the contribution of TEPC for lexical tone recognition in Cantonese which is a tonal language widely spoken in Chinese communities around the world. By comparing the contributions of TEPC extracted from different frequency regions on lexical tone recognition from a series of experiments, TEPC from high frequency regions always outperformed those from the low frequency regions, based on group analysis on closed-set corrected rationalized arcsine transformed scores, percentage of information transmission, and multidimensional scaling analysis; and on individual subject analysis on binomial distribution of proportion correct scores. / Yuen, Chi Pun. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-09, Section: B, page: . / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 255-262). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / School code: 1307.

Approximation of F0 contours in Cantonese speech is investigated. Multiple approximations are examined and evaluated. The modified speech utterances that carry the approximated contours at syllable, word and sentence levels are perceptually examined with reference to natural speech. It is found that linear approximation can adequately describe all perception-sensitive F0 variations in Cantonese speech. Each tone contour can be represented by one or two linear movements, and the transition between co-articulated tones can be represented by one linear movement. / F0 contours measured from human speech (observed contours) generally vary to a considerable extent. This research attempts to investigate perception-critical variations in these highly varying contours. In particular, F0 contours in Cantonese speech are concerned. Cantonese is a major Chinese dialect that is known of being rich in tones. Psychoacoustic findings suggest that human perception has limitations in perceiving pitch movements. This means that not all of the variations in the observed contours are perceivable. A major problem addressed in this study is to find the simplest acoustic representation of an observed F0 contour that is adequate to attain comparable perception with the natural speech. / F0 variation in speech is known to carry abundant information, both linguistic and paralinguistic. Its impact on speech communication is thus widely concerned. F0 variation in speech, being a major super-segmental acoustic feature, has received a lot of attention, particularly from the perspectives of production-acoustics and perception-acoustics. However, it is noted that perception-acoustic knowledge of F0 variation in association with speech naturalness is quite limited. This is especially the case in the studies of tonal languages, in which most efforts are made on acoustic cues related to tone identification. / The feasibility of using linear approximation greatly simplifies the way to understand and interpret F0 variations in speech processing, by the means of learning the properties of linear movements. Three steps of analysis are carried out on the generated linear approximations. The first one examines the movement slopes in the approximated F0 contours of isolated syllables, in comparison with the perceptual thresholds found in the psychoacoustic studies. The second analysis is performed over a set of linearly approximated F0 contours of polysyllabic Cantonese words. The determining attributes of these linear movements, i.e., movement slopes, movement heights and time locations of turning points are analyzed statistically. The last analysis concerns the evaluation of modified F0 contours. Objective evaluations are compared with perceptual evaluation. These analyses provide knowledge which can improve our understanding on how F0 variations are processed in speech path. / To explore the potentials oflinear approximation in research of speech prosody, a perception-oriented framework of automatic approximation is developed, so as to replace the manual process in the feasibility study. The framework aims to make the process of deriving approximations standardized, consistent and efficient. It is formulated based on the experiences from manual approximations and is also implemented with other perceptual findings. The initial test on polysyllabic words gives promising results. / Li, Yujia. / Adviser: Tan Lee. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 73-04, Section: B, page: . / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2011. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 161-170). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [201-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract also in Chinese; includes Chinese characters.

Lai Wing-sze. / Thesis submitted in: August 2004. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 233-237). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Abstract --- p.i / Acknowledgements --- p.iii / Chapter Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Rational and Significance --- p.1 / Chapter 1.2 --- Scope of analysis --- p.2 / Chapter 1.3 --- Organization --- p.4 / Chapter Chapter 2 --- Background --- p.6 / Chapter 2.1 --- Comparison of Cantonese and English consonants --- p.6 / Chapter 2.2 --- Comparison of Cantonese and English vowels --- p.8 / Chapter 2.3 --- Comparison of Cantonese and English syllables --- p.9 / Chapter 2.4 --- Comparison of Cantonese and English autosegments --- p.12 / Chapter Chapter 3 --- Literature Review --- p.18 / Chapter 3.1 --- Tone assignment in Cantonese loanwords --- p.18 / Chapter 3.2 --- Relationship between tone and stress --- p.27 / Chapter 3.3 --- Research Questions --- p.31 / Chapter Chapter 4 --- Methodology --- p.32 / Chapter 4.1 --- Data Collection and Classification --- p.32 / Chapter 4.2 --- Loanword Verification Task --- p.48 / Chapter 4.3 --- Loanword Creation Task --- p.51 / Chapter Chapter 5 --- Investigation of Tonal Patterns --- p.55 / Chapter 5.1 --- Monosyllabic Loanwords --- p.55 / Chapter 5.2 --- Disyllabic Loanwords --- p.59 / Chapter 5.3 --- Summary of Tonal Patterns in Monosyllabic and Disyllabic Loanwords --- p.81 / Chapter 5.4 --- Loanwords with more than two syllables --- p.81 / Chapter Chapter 6 --- Further Evidence on Tonal Patterns --- p.92 / Chapter 6.1 --- Results of Loanword Verification Task --- p.92 / Chapter 6.2 --- Results of Loanword Creation Task --- p.103 / Chapter 6.3 --- Tonal Assignment by New Generation --- p.115 / Chapter Chapter 7 --- Constraints and Rankings in Tone Assignment in Loanwords --- p.116 / Chapter 7.1 --- OT Concepts and Mechanisms --- p.116 / Chapter 7.2 --- Tonal Features --- p.120 / Chapter 7.3 --- My Proposed Account --- p.129 / Chapter 7.4 --- Constraints and Rankings --- p.132 / Chapter 7.5 --- Summary --- p.145 / Chapter Chapter 8 --- Conclusion and Implication --- p.147 / Appendices --- p.150 / Appendix I All collected Loanword Data --- p.150 / Appendix II Eliminated Loanword Data --- p.164 / Appendix III Kept Loanword Data --- p.168 / Appendix IV Initial Loanword Classification --- p.181 / Appendix V Loanword Questionnaire A --- p.198 / Appendix VI Loanword Questionnaire A Script --- p.201 / Appendix VII Loanword Questionnaire B --- p.203 / Appendix VIII More Examples of σ→ σ55 --- p.207 / Appendix IX More Examples of 'σσ --- p.209 / Appendix X More Examples of'σ[ --- p.214 / Appendix XI More Examples of ['σ --- p.217 / Appendix XII Disyllabic Loanwords with Atypical Tonal Patterns --- p.218 / Appendix XIII Disyllabic Loanwords with Other Tonal Influences --- p.220 / Appendix XIV Trisyllabic Loanwords with Atypical Tonal Patterns --- p.222 / Appendix XV Results of Loanword Creation Task --- p.224 / References --- p.233