Hakhun Tangsa is one of around eighty ethnic and linguistic communities called Tangsa or Tangshang. Hakhuns live mostly in Arunachal Pradesh, India, and in Sagaing Division, Myanmar. The number of speakers is estimated at around ten thousand. Hakhun is a Tibeto-Burman language, and it forms a subgroup with Nocte, Wancho, Phom, Konyak, Chang, and Khiamngan called Konyak or Northern Naga. Hakhun is a tonal language with twenty-two consonants, six vowels, and a simple syllable structure. Open word classes include Nouns and Verbs; property concept terms form a subclass of verbs. Noun roots are mostly monosyllabic, and most multisyllabic nouns are compounds. Nominal morphology includes prossessive prefixes and a set of semantically specific suffixes. Case is coded by postpositions. Verb roots are also mostly monosyllabic. A few verbs have suppletive stems. Verb serialization is common, and expresses complex events like resultative and sequential. A few grammaticalized verbs/elements contribute abstract meanings like phase, associated motion, causative, benefactive, etc. Typical verbal categories are expressed by independent particles. The most extensive and grammatically obligatory set consists of single syllable particles called operators, which express verbal categories like tense, mood, deixis, negation, inverse, and argument indexation. The typical argument indexation pattern is hierarchical. Deviations from this pattern is used to express certain pragmatic effects like affectedness and politeness. Non-verbal clauses may take overt copulas depending on tense and polarity. Most semantic distinctions, such as equation, property-concepts, quantification, simulation, and location are expressed by the nominal strategy. Existential and possession are expressed by a distinct strategy. Typical verbal clauses include intransitive, transitive, and ditransitive; less typical ones include weather condition, sensation-emotion, reflexive, reciprocal, and ‘need’ constructions. Person-based split-ergativity is seen in case marking, where first and second person singular arguments follow accusative, and the rest ergative alignment. Accusative alignment is also found in argument indexation in non-final clauses. The object alignment is indirective in case marking. Complement clauses include sentence-like, non-finite, and infinitive complement clauses. Adverbial clauses include various kinds of temporal clauses, temporal/conditional clauses, counterfactual, concessive, purpose, and substitutive clauses. Clause chaining (medial-final) is prevalent. Independent sentences are linked through tail-head linking and through connectives.

L’objectif de cette thèse est de concevoir et de construire, un système Text-To-Speech (TTS) haute qualité à base de HMM (Hidden Markov Model) pour le vietnamien, une langue tonale. Le système est appelé VTED (Vietnamese TExt-to-speech Development system). Au vu de la grande importance de tons lexicaux, un tonophone” – un allophones dans un contexte tonal – a été proposé comme nouvelle unité de la parole dans notre système de TTS. Un nouveau corpus d’entraînement, VDTS (Vietnamese Di-Tonophone Speech corpus), a été conçu à partir d’un grand texte brut pour une couverture de 100% de di-phones tonalisés (di-tonophones) en utilisant l’algorithme glouton. Un total d’environ 4000 phrases ont été enregistrées et pré-traitées comme corpus d’apprentissage de VTED.Dans la synthèse de la parole sur la base de HMM, bien que la durée de pause puisse être modélisée comme un phonème, l’apparition de pauses ne peut pas être prédite par HMM. Les niveaux de phrasé ne peuvent pas être complètement modélisés avec des caractéristiques de base. Cette recherche vise à obtenir un découpage automatique en groupes intonatifs au moyen des seuls indices de durée. Des blocs syntaxiques constitués de phrases syntaxiques avec un nombre borné de syllabes (n), ont été proposés pour prévoir allongement final (n = 6) et pause apparente (n = 10). Des améliorations pour allongement final ont été effectuées par des stratégies de regroupement des blocs syntaxiques simples. La qualité du modèle prédictive J48-arbre-décision pour l’apparence de pause à l’aide de blocs syntaxiques, combinée avec lien syntaxique et POS (Part-Of-Speech) dispose atteint un F-score de 81,4 % (Précision = 87,6 %, Recall = 75,9 %), beaucoup mieux que le modèle avec seulement POS (F-score=43,6%) ou un lien syntaxique (F-score=52,6%).L’architecture du système a été proposée sur la base de l’architecture HTS avec une extension d’une partie traitement du langage naturel pour le Vietnamien. L’apparence de pause a été prédit par le modèle proposé. Les caractéristiques contextuelles incluent les caractéristiques d’identité de “tonophones”, les caractéristiques de localisation, les caractéristiques liées à la tonalité, et les caractéristiques prosodiques (POS, allongement final, niveaux de rupture). Mary TTS a été choisi comme plateforme pour la mise en oeuvre de VTED. Dans le test MOS (Mean Opinion Score), le premier VTED, appris avec les anciens corpus et des fonctions de base, était plutôt bonne, 0,81 (sur une échelle MOS 5 points) plus élevé que le précédent système – HoaSung (lequel utilise la sélection de l’unité non-uniforme avec le même corpus) ; mais toujours 1,2-1,5 point de moins que le discours naturel. La qualité finale de VTED, avec le nouveau corpus et le modèle de phrasé prosodique, progresse d’environ 1,04 par rapport au premier VTED, et son écart avec le langage naturel a été nettement réduit. Dans le test d’intelligibilité, le VTED final a reçu un bon taux élevé de 95,4%, seulement 2,6% de moins que le discours naturel, et 18% plus élevé que le premier. Le taux d’erreur du premier VTED dans le test d’intelligibilité générale avec le carré latin test d’environ 6-12% plus élevé que le langage naturel selon des niveaux de syllabe, de ton ou par phonème. Le résultat final ne s’écarte de la parole naturelle que de 0,4-1,4%. / The thesis objective is to design and build a high quality Hidden Markov Model (HMM-)based Text-To-Speech (TTS) system for Vietnamese – a tonal language. The system is called VTED (Vietnamese TExt-tospeech Development system). In view of the great importance of lexical tones, a “tonophone” – an allophone in tonal context – was proposed as a new speech unit in our TTS system. A new training corpus, VDTS (Vietnamese Di-Tonophone Speech corpus), was designed for 100% coverage of di-phones in tonal contexts (i.e. di-tonophones) using the greedy algorithm from a huge raw text. A total of about 4,000 sentences of VDTS were recorded and pre-processed as a training corpus of VTED.In the HMM-based speech synthesis, although pause duration can be modeled as a phoneme, the appearanceof pauses cannot be predicted by HMMs. Lower phrasing levels above words may not be completely modeled with basic features. This research aimed at automatic prosodic phrasing for Vietnamese TTS using durational clues alone as it appeared too difficult to disentangle intonation from lexical tones. Syntactic blocks, i.e. syntactic phrases with a bounded number of syllables (n), were proposed for predicting final lengthening (n = 6) and pause appearance (n = 10). Improvements for final lengthening were done by some strategies of grouping single syntactic blocks. The quality of the predictive J48-decision-tree model for pause appearance using syntactic blocks combining with syntactic link and POS (Part-Of-Speech) features reached F-score of 81.4% Precision=87.6%, Recall=75.9%), much better than that of the model with only POS (F-score=43.6%)or syntactic link (F-score=52.6%) alone.The architecture of the system was proposed on the basis of the core architecture of HTS with an extension of a Natural Language Processing part for Vietnamese. Pause appearance was predicted by the proposed model. Contextual feature set included phone identity features, locational features, tone-related features, and prosodic features (i.e. POS, final lengthening, break levels). Mary TTS was chosen as a platform for implementing VTED. In the MOS (Mean Opinion Score) test, the first VTED, trained with the old corpus and basic features, was rather good, 0.81 (on a 5 point MOS scale) higher than the previous system – HoaSung (using the non-uniform unit selection with the same training corpus); but still 1.2-1.5 point lower than the natural speech. The quality of the final VTED, trained with the new corpus and prosodic phrasing model, progressed by about 1.04 compared to the first VTED, and its gap with the natural speech was much lessened. In the tone intelligibility test, the final VTED received a high correct rate of 95.4%, only 2.6% lower than the natural speech, and 18% higher than the initial one. The error rate of the first VTED in the intelligibility test with the Latin square design was about 6-12% higher than the natural speech depending on syllable, tone or phone levels. The final one diverged about only 0.4-1.4% from the natural speech.

Current models of spoken word recognition have been predominantly based on studies of Indo-European languages. As a result, little is known about the recognition processes involved in the perception of tonal languages (e.g., Mandarin Chinese), and the role of lexical tone in speech perception. One view is that tonal languages are processed phonologically through individual segments, while another view is that they are processed lexically as a whole. Moreover, a recent study claimed to be the first to discover an early phonological processing stage in Mandarin (Huang et al., 2014). There seems to be a lack of investigations concerning tonal languages, as no clear conclusions have been made about the nature of tonal processes, or a model of spoken word recognition that best incorporates lexical tone. The current study addressed these issues by presenting 18 native Mandarin speakers with aural sentences with medial target words, which either matched or mismatched the preceding visually presented sentences with medial target words (e.g, 家 /jia1/ “home”). Violation conditions involved target words that differed in the following ways: tone violation, where only the tone was different (e.g., 价 /jia4/ “price”), onset violation, where only the onset was different (e.g., 虾 /xia1/ “shrimp”), and syllable violation, where both the tone and the onset were different (e.g., 糖 /tang2/ “candy”). We did not find evidence for an early phonological processing stage in Mandarin. Instead, our findings indicate that Mandarin syllables are processed incrementally through phonological segments and that lexical tone is strongly associated with semantic access. These results are discussed with respect to modifications for existing models in spoken word recognition to incorporate the processes involved with tonal language recognition. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)

The purpose of the study was to investigate the effect of 10 minutes of daily exposure for 10 weeks to a Chinese Music Curriculum and its effect on generating positive cultural attitudes towards the Chinese people, improving tonal discrimination skills, singing accuracy of tonal patterns, and accuracy of singing Chinese lyrics for third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade students, compared to a comparison group not receiving the Chinese Music Curriculum. In an elementary school in Miami-Dade County, Florida, 6 third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade classes were chosen and randomly assigned to either an intervention or a comparison group. A Chinese Music Curriculum was developed for the intervention group and implemented by classroom teachers. Meanwhile, the comparison group received normal academic instruction and a weekly music class by a music specialist. Pre- and post-tests were administered to both the intervention and comparison groups: (1) Children's Attitudes toward Chinese (CATC), (2) Intermediate Measures of Music Audiation-Tonal (IMMA, Gordon, 1982), and (3) Tonal Pattern Performance Measure (TPPM). The Chinese Song Performance Measure (CSPM) was administered to the intervention group only in order to measure students' abilities for accurately singing the Chinese lyrics of a simple Chinese song, "Little Rat." Data were subjected to a mixed Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) statistical analysis, item analysis, and Pearson Product-Moment correlation. The results demonstrated that the CATC survey was a reliable and valid measure to assess children's attitudes toward Chinese people. The overall effect of the Chinese Music Curriculum was significant in combination of the three outcome measures: CATC, IMMA, and TPPM. The follow-up individual examination revealed that children's attitudes toward Chinese people and tonal pattern singing accuracy were significantly improved, but tonal discrimination skills did not improve. Grade was found to influence children's singing accuracy of tonal patterns with fifth graders outperforming the third and fourth graders. All participants in the intervention group were able to sing a Chinese song with over 70% accuracy of the Chinese lyrics.