Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1982.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 281-286). Also available on the Internet.

Not available / text

published_or_final_version / Electrical and Electronic Engineering / Master / Master of Philosophy

(Uncorrected OCR) Abstract of thesis entitled Speaker- Independent Recognition of Putonghua Finals submitted by CHAN, Chit Man for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong � In December 1987 ABSTRACT A detailed study had been performed to address the problem of speaker-independent recognition of Putonghua (Mandarin) finals. The study included 35 Putonghua finals, 16 of which having trailing nasals. They were spoken by 51 speakers: 38 females, 13 males, in 5 different tones for two times. The sample was spectrally analyzed by a bank of 18 nonoverlapping critical-band filters. Three data reduction techniques: Karhunen-Loeve Transformation (KLT) , Discrete Cosine Transformation (OCT) and Stepwise Discriminant Analysis (SDA) , were comparat i vely studied for their feature representation capability. The results indicated that KLT was superior to both OCT and SDA. Furthermore, the theoretic equivalence of OCT to KLT was found to be valid only with 5 or more feature dimensions used in computation. On the other hand, the results also showed that the Hahalanobis and a proposed modified Mahalanobis distance both gave a better measurement of performance than the other distances tested, which included the City Block, Euclidean, Minkowski, and Chebyshev. .,. In the second Part of the study, the Hidden Markov Modelling (HMM) technique was investigated. Three classification methods: Phonemic Labell ing (PL), Vector Quantization (VQ) and a proposed Hybrid Symbol (HS) generation, were studied for use with HMM. Whilst PL was found to be simple and efficient, its performance was not as good as VQ. However, the time taken by VQ was excessive, especially in training. The results with the HS method showed that it .could successfully merge the speed advantage of PL and the better discriminatory power of VQ. An approximately 80% saving in the quantizer training time could be achieved with only a marginal loss in performance. At the same time, it Abs-l Abstract was also found that allowing skipping of states in a Left-to-Right model (LRM) could lead to a negative effect on overall recognition. As an indication of performance, the recognition rate of the simulated system was 81.3%, 95.0% and 98.0% with the best I, 2, and 3 candidates included, respectively, using a 256-level VQ and a 6-state, no-skip LRM on a sample of 8,400 finals from 48 speakers. The specific rates on non-nasal finals achieved even 96% - 98% using the best candidate alone . .. ," Abs-2 / abstract / toc / Electrical and Electronic Engineering / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

The study investigated the role of identity investment in the context of an English/Mandarin transitional bilingual education (TBE) program in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Fifteen students from Grades 1 to 3 and one teacher in the program participated in my research. Students were individually interviewed about how they viewed their identities along a continuum ranging from “Canadian” to “Chinese-Canadian” to “Chinese”. Students’ scores on bilingual vocabulary and reading measures were analyzed together with data provided by parents on language use and literacy practices at home. The research revealed that students manifested a range of identity configurations depending on language use at home and these identity configurations were related to students’ performance on the bilingual language and literacy measures. The findings, although tentative due to the small sample size, suggest that teachers should focus on affirming students’ bilingual and bicultural identities as a means of encouraging the development of bilingual proficiency.

No description available.

No description available.

The study investigated the role of identity investment in the context of an English/Mandarin transitional bilingual education (TBE) program in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Fifteen students from Grades 1 to 3 and one teacher in the program participated in my research. Students were individually interviewed about how they viewed their identities along a continuum ranging from “Canadian” to “Chinese-Canadian” to “Chinese”. Students’ scores on bilingual vocabulary and reading measures were analyzed together with data provided by parents on language use and literacy practices at home. The research revealed that students manifested a range of identity configurations depending on language use at home and these identity configurations were related to students’ performance on the bilingual language and literacy measures. The findings, although tentative due to the small sample size, suggest that teachers should focus on affirming students’ bilingual and bicultural identities as a means of encouraging the development of bilingual proficiency.

Mode of access: World Wide Web. / Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 212-232). / Electronic reproduction. / Also available by subscription via World Wide Web / xiv, 232 leaves, bound 29 cm