A Prosodic Labeling System for Mandarin Speech Database

A working database needs tools to transcribe and label at both phonetic and prosodic levels. While the proposed phonetic transcription system is a simplified from of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) following the SAMPA guidelines; the prosodic labeling system is an elaborated form of the ToBI (Tone and Break Indices) framework adopted for Mandarin. In particular, the proposed prosodic labeling system possesses the capability to label two kinds of prosody related phenomena: one correlates directly to specific acoustic parameters that can be measured automatically, namely, speech rate, speech volume, pitch level and pitch range; the other correlates to perceived temporal grouping and relative prominence, namely, breaks and emphases. Some preliminary findings with respect to the labeling system will be reported; these findings will also be utilized for subsequent design of software that aimed automatic transcription and labeling of Mandarin speech. Though the design is language dependent, we believe the findings may very well have cross-linguistic implications.