Development of pronunciation training system for Chinese triphthong using information technology

2023 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 19K03074
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Review Section: Basic Section 09070:Educational technology-related
• Research Institution: National Institute of Technology, Toyama College
• Principal Investigator: hoshino akemi 富山高等専門学校, その他部局等, 嘱託教授 (90300566)
• Project Period (FY): 2019-04-01 – 2024-03-31
• Keywords: 中国語 / 前鼻音 / 後鼻音 / 発音教育 / 発音判別 / 有声期間中のパワー / フォルマントの特徴

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Chinese aspirates are usually difficult to pronounce for Japanese students. In particular, discriminating between the utterances of front nasal sounds and back nasal sounds.Front nasal sounds and back nasal sounds is the most difficult to learn for them. For the students' self-learning, the automatic judgment system has been developed using a computer, so as to check their pronunciations by themselves.
We extracted the features of correctly pronounced front nasal and back nasal by observing the spectrum evolution of breathing power during and formants F1-F3 in the voiced period of sounds uttered by 30 Chinese native speakers. We developed automatic discrimination system for Chinese bilabial and velar front nasal sounds and back nasal sounds. The success rates of the system were 76% and 86% for bilabial front nasal sounds and back nasal sound., and higher than 82% and 81% for velar front nasal sounds and back nasal sounds.

Free Research Field

中国語の発音教育と音声解析

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

いままでの研究者は色々な手法で中国語の音声認識や音声合成を研究しているが，発話の有声期間中のパワーやフォルマントにも着目した新たな評価基準を用いた独創的な中国語発音教育システムの開発は，まだなされていない。更にこれまで，中国語の発音解析の研究はなされているが，発音の教育訓練用のシステムを意識した研究は公表されていないし，市販されている教材もない。このシステムを用いて「前鼻音」と「後鼻音」発音が正確かどうか，チェックできるので，中国語の発音の学習の助けになる。