Into-Cass: A Corpus for the Study of Intonation and Prosody in Chinese Dialects and Ethnic Languages

Abstract

China is well-known for being home to hundreds of related dialects, collectively known as Chinese. These dialects are divided into ten major groups, each of which also contains multiple subgroups, according to Language Atlas of China (2nd edition). There are in addition over 100 ethnic languages spoken by approximately 8% of the population of China. While phonological systems were traditionally described in terms of segments, lexical tones or pitch accents, development of speech communication and speech interactive systems calls for a more in-depth understanding of post-lexical prosodic features such as intonation, especially in light of the vast linguistic diversity in Chinese languages. A project has been launched to study the intonation and prosody of Chinese dialects and ethnic languages from typological and interactive perspectives. This paper first proposes a theoretical framework in the study of intonation and prosody, and then introduces the construction of the Corpus for the Study of Intonation and Prosody in Chinese Dialects and Ethnic Languages (INTO-CASS).