Tonal Characteristics Research Articles

Impacts of low-frequency noise from industrial sources in residential areas

The World Health Organisation classifies Low-frequency noise (LFN) as an environmental problem that causes various health impacts. Industrial sites and activities are among the various identified sources of LFN. However, industrial noise has been more studied on higher frequencies than lower frequencies. To fill this gap, this paper evaluates the impacts of LFN emitted by industrial sources in neighbouring residential areas. The method was supported by a quantitative evaluation by using three indicators: L10–L90, dB(C)–dB(A) and the tonal characteristics of the sound. This quantitative evaluation was complemented by a qualitative assessment supported by a questionnaire addressed to the residents living near the industrial sources. The study was carried out in two industrial parks in Guimarães, Portugal. The quantitative evaluation showed that industrial activities were a source of LFN, but the low-frequency content of the noise was not very significant. The noise had fluctuating characteristics and was found to be tonal in one location. In turn, the complementary qualitative evaluation revealed that residents felt disturbed and linked effects such as stress, irritability, and sleepiness to noise. The study provides new insights into the impact that LFN may produce in residential areas located near industrial plants and highlights the need of adopting effective planning policies to prevent residential areas from industrial noise.

Perceptual Asymmetries and Auditory Processing of Estonian Quantities.

Similar to visual perception, auditory perception also has a clearly described “pop-out” effect, where an element with some extra feature is easier to detect among elements without an extra feature. This phenomenon is better known as auditory perceptual asymmetry. We investigated such asymmetry between shorter or longer duration, and level or falling of pitch of linguistic stimuli that carry a meaning in one language (Estonian), but not in another (Russian). For the mismatch negativity (MMN) experiment, we created four different types of stimuli by modifying the duration of the first vowel [ɑ] (170, 290 ms) and pitch contour (level vs. falling pitch) of the stimuli words (‘SATA,’ ‘SAKI’). The stimuli were synthesized from Estonian words (‘SATA,’ ‘SAKI’) and follow the Estonian language three-way quantity system, which incorporates tonal features (falling pitch contour) together with temporal patterns. This made the meaning of the word dependent on the combination of both features and allows us to compare the relative contribution of duration and pitch contour in discrimination of language stimuli in the brain via MMN generation. The participants of the experiment were 12 Russian native speakers with little or no experience in Estonian and living in Estonia short-term, and 12 Estonian native speakers (age 18–27 years). We found that participants’ perception of the linguistic stimuli differed not only according to the physical features but also according to their native language, confirming that the meaning of the word interferes with the early automatic processing of phonological features. The GAMM and ANOVA analysis of the reversed design results showed that the deviant with longer duration among shorter standards elicited a MMN response with greater amplitude than the short deviant among long standards, while changes in pitch contour (falling vs. level pitch) produced neither strong MMN nor asymmetry. Thus, we demonstrate the effect of language background on asymmetric perception of linguistic stimuli that aligns with those of previous studies (Jaramillo et al., 2000), and contributes to the growing body of knowledge supporting auditory perceptual asymmetry.

An HPSG approach to Chinese syllable structure and tone sandhi

In Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG), the phonological module has been strikingly underinvestigated compared to other parts of the grammar. To remedy this situation, the aims of this study are both theoretical and empirical. We employ revised Typed Feature Structures (TFSs) to describe a number of phonological structures in Mandarin Chinese, mostly concerned with syllable structure and tone, based on the X-bar approach to the syllable structure of Mandarin (van de Weijer, 2012; van de Weijer and Zhang, 2008; Zhang, 2008). Specifically, we integrate tone features in the HPSG framework, and analyze tone sandhi (TS) by way of TFSs and constraints. We demonstrate that the enriched definitions and constraints using TFSs in phonology, like in morphology and syntax in HPSG, can successfully capture the relevant phonological generalizations and are therefore a step on the way toward a more comprehensive HPSG account of Mandarin grammar, illustrating its advantages such as simplicity, constructional consistency, modularity and facilitating interface description.

Ground Penetrating Radar Investigations of the River Ice Cover in the Integrated Monitoring of Dangerous Hydrological Phenomena

Ice jams are dangerous hydrological phenomena characteristic of most rivers of Russia. To reduce the risk of flooding of settlements during the spring flood, the development of technology for integrated monitoring of the river ice cover, based on the methods of GPR and the Earth remote sensing (ERS), is proposed. The advantage of the technology is the ability to obtain detailed information in vast and inaccessible areas with a bleak climate. The results of an experimental study of a site of 0.4 km2 in the Khatystakh arm of the Lena River are presented. The OKO-2 GPR (Logis-Geotech group of companies, Russia) determined the thickness and structure of the ice cover. Satellite images determined the tonal characteristics of the ice cover in contact with sand and water. The combination of GPR results and ERS images made it possible to obtain detailed information about the spatial change in the thickness and structure of the ice cover. The prospect of integrated information lies in the possibility of integral assessments, and their use in modeling, monitoring and forecasting ice conditions in the spring.

Polarity in a four-level tone language: tone features in Tenyidie

This paper reports a new kind of tone polarity, where the phenomenon is seen in a language with four level tones, Tenyidie (also known as Angami). I show that the polarity is in the features of the tones, i.e. at a subtonal level. The data also provide evidence that tones themselves can be broken down into smaller features. Furthermore, I demonstrate that the polarity pattern observed in the language is an epiphenomenon, a reflex of the Obligatory Contour Principle, not a phonological process in its own right. I show this with the help of a new type of tonal representation. Theoretical discussions of tone polarity have so far been almost entirely restricted to African tone systems, and to languages with just two tones. This paper brings into the discussion a Tibeto-Burman language with four tones.

An Overview of Etulo: An Idomoid Language

Etulo is an Idomoid language spoken in two Nigerian states: Taraba and Benue. This work gives an overview of the core linguistic features of Etulo as spoken in Benue state. At the phonological level, we highlight the Etulo sound system, its tonal features, syllable structure and the most common phonological processes attested. At the morphological level, we focus on its derivational morphology which involves morphological processes such as affixation, reduplication and compounding. We give a list of the identified word classes with emphasis on the noun and verbal system. Also discussed, are grammatical features which are considered areal such as its rich class of ideophones and verb serialization. Our findings show that Etulo shares some core structural features with other Idomoid languages such as Idoma. The data used for this study are obtained from Etulo language consultants who are native speakers. We adopt a descriptive approach in the analysis of the Etulo language data.

An Experimental Study on the Development of Chinese Tones of Korean Learners

The error analysis is based on an experiment among Korean learners in three Chinese language levels, and Chinese native speakers are taken as the reference.<BR> It is found that Korean learners have not only the phasic characteristics of tone acquisition in different stages but also the common characteristics of different stages. The front T2 word and the back word tone produce assimilation and coarticulation in the tonal pattern, and the reverse coarticulation in the tonal value. The correlation between tone listening and articulating performance is related to Chinese language proficiency. The causes of listening and mispronunciation were related to the learners’ tendency to choose the acoustic features of the Chinese tones.

A Computer Vision System for Detecting Tufted Carpet Defects.(Dept.T)

This work presents an approach to extract, analyze and select image attributes necessary for building a vision computer system that is able to detect and classify tufted carper defects. Four different tufted carpets and four different defects were considered; missing pile, higher pile, lower pile, slobs and knots. Carpet digital images were statistically analyzed to calculate Mean, Variance, Skewness, Kurtosis, and Entropy, known as tonal features. Texture features were extracted from co-occurrence matrices describing the relationships between intensities of two pixels at a certain distance and angle from each other and evaluated using SGLDM and GLDM statistics. Graphical presentation and visual assessment were made to choose the most significant features. For classification. artificial neural networks were built and trained using perceptron and back propagation algorithms. The recognition was successful in detecting common tufted carpet defects.

An apparent-time study of an ongoing sound change in Seoul Korean: A prosodic account.

In present-day Seoul Korean, the primary phonetic feature for the lenis–aspirated stop distinction is shifting from VOT to F0. Some previous studies have considered this sound change to be a tonogenesis, whereby the low-level F0 perturbation has developed into tonal features (L for the lenis and H for the aspirated) in the segmental phonology. They, however, have examined the stop distinction only at a phrase- or utterance-initial position. We newly explore the sound change in relation to various prosodic structural factors (position and prominence). Apparent-time production data were recorded from four speaker groups: young female, young male, old female, old male. The way the speakers use VOT versus F0 indeed varies as a function of position and prominence. Crucially, in all groups, VOT is still used for the lenis–aspirated distinction phrase-medially due to the lenis stop voicing. This role of VOT, however, is found only in the non-prominent (unfocused) condition, in which the F0 difference is reduced to a low-level perturbation effect. In the prominent (focused) context in which tones come into play, the role of VOT diminishes, led by young female speakers. These can be interpreted as a prosodically-conditioned, complementary use of the features to maintain sufficient contrast. Importantly, however, the tonal difference under focus is not bidirectionally polarized, so that F0 is not lowered for the lenis stop. A lack of direct enhancement of the distinctive L tone weakens a possibility that F0 is transphonologized to the phonemic feature system of the language. As an alternative to the view that tonal features are newly introduced in the segmental phonology, we propose a prosodic account: the sound change is best characterized as a prosodically-conditioned change in the use of the segmental voicing feature (implemented by VOT) versus already available post-lexical tones in the intonational phonology of Korean.

Cortical thickness and surface area of left anterior temporal areas affects processing of phonological cues to morphosyntax

Lack of methods to experimentally assess the perceptual processing of sound features and allow one to measure differences in phonological proficiency has been a limitation for speech processing studies in native speakers. Tonal features associated with Swedish word-stems, word accents, which cue grammatical suffixes, constitute, however, such sound features that can be exploited to generate measures of reliance on morphosyntactically relevant phonological information during word processing. Specifically, there is a natural variance between native speakers in response time (RT) difference between phonologically valid and invalid word accent-suffix combinations that can be used to quantify perceptual phonological proficiency. This study uses ultra-high field magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to investigate word accents as phonological cues to morphosyntactic meaning. The study adds to the understanding of the neural basis for both morphosyntactically relevant phonological cues by reporting correlations between differences in listeners’ RT for validly and invalidly cued suffixes and cortical thickness in left anterior and middle temporal gyrus, and the left anterior superior temporal sulcus as well as cortical surface area in the left middle and inferior temporal gyri. The cortical areas studied are known constituents of the ventral speech processing stream, necessary for word and phrase recognition.

Different facial cues for different speech styles in Mandarin tone articulation

Research has shown that facial articulatory cues aid speech perception. However, how such cues are employed in different speech styles remains unclear. This study examined facial articulatory features of Mandarin tones in clear versus conversational speech styles produced by 20 native Mandarin speakers. Using computer-vision and image-processing techniques, keypoints representing each speaker's head, eyebrow and lips were identified on video, and their movement trajectories during tone productions were tracked. Thirty-three features based on distance, time and kinematics (e.g., velocity) were subsequently computed to characterize the movements. Random forest and t-test analyses were then conducted to identify the significant features between the two speech styles. Results reveal that, across tones, clear relative to conversational style involves greater movement distance and velocity, reaching articulatory targets faster. Individual tone analyses further indicate that the faster target approximation in clear speech occurs for contour tones (2-4) but not the flat tone 1. The increase in distance and velocity in clear speech is reflected on more features for the most dynamic tone 3 than for the other tones. These results suggest that clear-speech modifications for tones can be exhibited through facial movements, involving hyper-articulation across tones and tone-specific adjustments aligned with individual tone trajectories.

중국어 방언 성조 분포 연구

Earlier literature on tones of Chinese dialects tends to describe a tonal inventory and tone sandhi of an individual dialect or diachronic changes across dialects. However, a typological explanation of tonal systems across various Chinese dialects is still in need to understand the language specific features of Chinese tones as well as their similarities with other tone languages. This paper collects tones from 738 dialects of Chinese and examines the tone distribution from a typological perspective. Results of the paper reveal several important features of Chinese tones: (1) Chinese has significantly larger inventories than tone languages in general. (2) The frequency pattern of ‘level ＞ fall ＞ rise ＞ concave ＞ convex’ found in tone languages shows a negative relation between tonal markedness and distribution. Chinese dialects, however, are not in line with this frequency pattern, i.e., the relative frequency among level, fall, and rise may vary. (3) The most distinctive specificity pertaining to level tone in Chinese is that high register is notably favored for level tone. (4) The balanced distribution between fall and rise and that between concave and convex in terms of pitch register found in tone languages are not shown in Chinese. Rather, fall and rise seem to favor low register and high register, respectively. (5) Complex contour tones appear to realize within the same register rather than across registers. (6) Tones treated as checked tone in a Chinese philological tradition tend to realize as level. Given the paucity of comparative research on Chinese dialects and other tone languages, the findings of the present study contribute to achieve a better understanding of not only the tonal systems of Chinese dialects but also the tonal universals across languages.

Tonal Adaptation Strategies in Èwùlù and Ùrhòbò Loanword Phonologies

Studies on tonal adaptation strategies in English loanwords of the Nigerian languages (NLs): Yoruba (Y), Hausa (H), Bini (B) and Emai (E) commonly translate the prosodic structure of the loanwords into native prosodic configurations. Translation of pitch melody of borrowed words in the NLs tends to be determined by the position of English word stress. Comparative/typological studies that independently examine such tonal adaptation in Nigerian smaller languages are scanty. Consequently, this paper examines the pattern of word stress adaptation into tone in English loanwords in Èwùlù (Igboid) and Ùrhòbò (Edoid), with a view to revealing the Èwùlù and Ùrhòbò tonal adaptation features common to Y, H, B and E but specific to Èwùlù and/or Ùrhòbò. The empirical observations of data are explained with Autosegmental Theory (Goldsmith, 1976), which formally expresses the relations that hold between the tone loans, tone bearing units and CV nodes operating at different tiers. Findings of this study show/confirm that the English citation pitch accent H*L% basically governs the domain of adaptation of (H)igh tone and (L)ow in loans. Moreover, findings reveal that inserted vowels in CC-clusters in Èwùlù and Ùrhòbò loans are inherently toneless, acquiring their tones from adjacent tones. However, the study identifies two salient peculiar patterns: (1) Ùrhòbò assigns low tone on intervening V element in CC-cluster, a domain characteristically assigned H tone in Èwùlù, Y, H, B, and E. (2) Ùrhòbò regularly simplifies source H*L% as /H/ in adapted source CVC, a context where Èwùlù and the aforementioned NLs rather adapt /H.L/ melody to realise vowel doubling. To this end, the current researchers recommend further comparative or typological studies on English loanwords in other NLs to further identify patterns of tone adaptation and resyllabification rules in loanwords similar to those of Urhobo in particular.

Regional Bullying Text Recognition Based on Two-Branch Parallel Neural Networks

Traditional features and pipelined algorithms ignore the subspace semantic information and different information complementarity of regional bullying text when describing and recognizing regional bullying text. In order to solve the above problems, combined with features of Chinese, a regional bullying text recognition algorithm called Two-Branch Parallel Neural Network (TB-PNN) is proposed. First, the word vector, sentence vector, pinyin and tone features extracted by the word embedding technique and the character feature extracted by the Character Graph Convolutional Neural (CGCN). Secondly, TB-PNN is constructed by Multi-Head Self-Attention Mechanism (MHSA), Capsule Network (CapsNet) and Independent Recurrent Neural Network (IndRNN). The left branch was MHSA-CapsNet and the right branch was Multi-MHSA-IndRNN. The algorithm assigns weights to the fused features through MHSA, uses the CapsNet of the left branch to mine the key features with high weight and generates vector tags, and uses the IndRNN of the right branch to capture the subspace semantic information of the key features in the text. The left and right branches form complementary information. Finally, SoftMax classifier is used to realize the accurate recognition of regional bullying text. The experimental results show that TB-PNN algorithm can effectively improve the recognition accuracy of regional bullying text.

Noise Sources and Spectral Characteristics of the Tip-Jet Driven Rotor

The noise sources of the tip-jet driven rotor are mainly classified as rotor blade noise and jet noise. The rotor blade noise includes thickness noise, loading noise, and nonlinear quadrupole noise, while the jet noise includes nozzle momentum noise and jet radiation noise. Each noise component has different noise source mechanisms related to flow characteristics and the rotating motion. Especially, the nozzle momentum noise has two noise source mechanisms based on the rotating steady aerodynamic load and the nozzle mass flow rate. The details of the time signal and spectrum are discussed to study the unique spectral characteristics. The tip-jet driven rotor noise has both tonal and broadband spectral characteristics. The periodicity of each instance of jet radiation noise is discussed, while the total jet radiation noise also has a tonal noise component. The noise source mechanisms and spectral characteristics are important considerations for an acoustically efficient tip-jet driven rotor.

Characterizing the distinctive acoustic cues of Mandarin tones.

This study aims to characterize distinctive acoustic features of Mandarin tones based on a corpus of 1025 monosyllabic words produced by 21 native Mandarin speakers. For each tone, 22 acoustic cues were extracted. Besides standard F0, duration, and intensity measures, further cues were determined by fitting two mathematical functions to the pitch contours. The first function is a parabola, which gives three parameters: a mean F0, an F0 slope, and an F0 second derivative. The second is a broken-line function, which models the contour as a continuous curve consisting of two lines with a single breakpoint. Cohen's d, sparse Principal Component Analysis, and other statistical measures are used to identify which of the cues, and which combinations of the cues, are important for distinguishing each tone from each other among all the speakers. Although the specific cues that best characterize the tone contours depend on the particular tone and the statistical measure used, this paper shows that the three cues obtained by fitting a parabola to the tone contour are broadly effective. This research suggests using these three cues as a canonical choice for defining tone characteristics.

Development of criteria for determining the color saturation of gemstones

The urgency of the problem is conditioned by spectral methods development providing objectivity and accuracy of gemstones color grading. The purpose of the work: working-out the criteria which allows to determine gemstones saturation based on physicsmathematics patterns and spectral data. Methodology of the research: studying of colored gemstones transmittance spectra, discovery of the regularities and development of physics-mathematics methods for the color saturation grading. Results. The absolute and relative criteria for gemstone saturation grading was suggested as ratio of difference between light transmittance to squared difference between wavelengths at the area of basic chromophore element. Experimental data and allochromatic gemstones saturation calculation examples were presented considering spectral sensitivity of human eye. Summary. Gemstones absorption and transmittance spectra research allows to define tone and saturation gemstone color features. To improve tone and saturation definition accuracy, it is necessary to select standard hue of gemstones for wavelengths scale graduating along with spectral sensitivity of human eye.

Rapid implicit extraction of abstract orthographic patterns of Chinese characters during reading.

Orthographic processing is crucial in reading. For the Chinese language, sub-lexical processing has already taken place at radical level. Previous literature reported early position-specific radical representations and later position-general radical representations, implying a possible separating process of abstract position information irrespective of radicals per se from radical representations during orthographic processing. However, it remains largely unclear whether the abstract pattern of spatial arrangement of radicals can be rapidly extracted, and if so, whether this extraction takes place at the visual cortex, the very first processing center. As the visual cortex is documented to actively participate in orthographic processing, it may also play a role in the possible extraction of abstract orthographic patterns of Chinese characters. Hence, we hypothesize that abstract orthographic patterns of Chinese characters are covertly extracted at the visual cortex during reading. In this study, we investigated whether the visual cortex could rapidly extract abstract structural patterns of Chinese characters, using the event-related potential (ERP) technique. We adopted an active oddball paradigm with two types of deviant stimuli different only in one feature, structural or tonal, from standard stimuli; in each of the two sessions, subjects focused conscious attention on one feature and neglected the other. We observed that the ERPs recorded at occipital electrodes responded differentially to standard and structural deviant stimuli in both sessions, especially within the time range of the occipital P200 component. Then, we extracted three source waves arising from different levels of the visual cortex. Early response differences (from 88 to 456 ms after stimulus onset) were observed between the source waves, probably arising from left primary/secondary and bilateral associative visual cortices, in response to standard and deviant stimuli that violated abstract structural patterns, whether subjects focused their attention on the character structure or not. This suggests rapid extraction of abstract structural patterns of Chinese characters in the visual cortex, no matter the abstract structural pattern was explicit or implicit to subjects. Note that the source waves arising from right primary/secondary visual cortices in response to standard and structural deviant stimuli did not differ at all, indicating that this extraction of the abstract structural pattern of Chinese characters was left-lateralized. Besides, no difference was observed between source waves originating from any level of the visual cortex to standard and deviant stimuli that violated abstract tonal patterns, until 768 ms when a late effect related to conscious detection of targets occurred at higher levels of the visual cortex. Note that at late stages (later than 698 ms after stimulus onset), responses arising from bilateral associative visual cortices to standard and target stimuli differed for both sessions, no matter the structural or tonal feature was attended to. Our findings support the primitive intelligence of visual cortex to rapidly extract abstract orthographic patterns of Chinese characters that might be engaged in further lexical processing. Our findings also suggest that this rapid extraction can take place implicitly during reading.

Different neural mechanisms for rapid acquisition of words with grammatical tone in learners from tonal and non-tonal backgrounds: ERP evidence

Initial second language acquisition proceeds surprisingly quickly. Foreign words can sometimes be used within minutes after the first exposure. Yet, it is unclear whether such rapid learning also takes place for more complex, multi-layered properties like words with complex morphosyntax and/or tonal features, and whether it is influenced by transfer from the learners’ native language. To address these questions, we recorded tonal and non-tonal learners’ brain responses while they acquired novel tonal words with grammatical gender and number on two consecutive days. Comparing the novel words to repeated but non-taught pseudoword controls, we found that tonal learners demonstrated a full range of early and late event-related potentials in novel tonal word processing: an early word recognition component (~50 ms), an early left anterior negativity (ELAN), a left anterior negativity (LAN), and a P600. Non-tonal learners exhibited mainly late processing when accessing the meaning of the tonal words: a P600, as well as a LAN after an overnight consolidation. Yet, this group displayed correlations between pitch perception abilities and ELAN, and between acquisition accuracy and LAN, suggesting that certain features may lead to facilitated processing of tonal words in non-tonal learners. Furthermore, the two groups displayed indistinguishable performance at the behavioural level, clearly suggesting that the same learning outcome may be achieved through at least partially different neural mechanisms. Overall, the results suggest that it is possible to rapidly acquire words with grammatical tone and that transfer plays an important role even in very early second language acquisition.

The effect of overnight consolidation in the perceptual learning of non-native tonal contrasts.

Sleep-mediated overnight consolidation has been found to facilitate perceptual learning by promoting learners' generalization across talkers in their perception of novel segmental categories. Lexical tone is characterized by high variability across talkers, and displays dynamic change over time. For this reason, it remains unclear whether a similar effect of overnight consolidation would be found for perceptual learning of novel tonal contrasts. Thus, this study aims to examine whether overnight consolidation facilitates talker-independent learning of lexical tones in the identification and discrimination of novel Cantonese level tones by Mandarin listeners. Two groups of Mandarin listeners were perceptually trained either in the morning or in the evening. Listeners were trained in a tone identification (ID) task with feedback using stimuli produced by a trained talker. Their post-training changes and generalization to a novel talker were then tested in the ID and AX discrimination tasks using stimuli produced by trained and untrained talkers in three posttests following training: immediately after training, 12-hour delay, and 24-hour delay. While the evening group slept between the first and second posttests, the morning group did not. The accuracy rates in the ID task showed that the evening group showed an improved trend, predicted by their individual sleep time, in identifying the level tones produced by both the trained and untrained talkers; in contrast, the morning group showed a declining trend. The d-prime scores in the AX discrimination task did not show different patterns between the two groups. The finding of sleep-related identification changes over time suggests that overnight consolidation might have facilitated tone learning of stimuli produced by the novel talker and eventually facilitated the formation of a more talker-independent representation of novel tone categories in long-term memory. The results are discussed in light of the features of lexical tones to shed light on the mechanism of phonetic learning.