NSF East Asia and Pacific Summer Institute (EAPSI) for FY 2013 in China

这项行动资助亚利桑那大学的丹尼尔·布伦纳（Daniel Brenner）于2013年夏天在北京的中国社会科学院开展一个社会、行为和经济科学领域的研究项目。项目名称为“会话和阅读语音中的普通话声调感知”。主持会议的科学家是胡方博士。在普通话中，单词不仅通过音段来区分（[ba]“拉出来”和[pa]“爬上去”），而且还通过音调来区分，即重叠在音节上的音高模式（[pa]音调上升，“爬上去”；[pa]音调下降，“害怕”）。这个项目描述了在对话中产生的音调和在认真讲话时产生的音调之间的关系，以及这些差异如何影响听者对两种讲话风格中音调的感知。在项目的第一阶段，将录制普通话使用者的对话和阅读单词列表，并比较两种音调制作的声学效果。在第二阶段，说普通话的受试者对这些单词进行感知任务，要么使用完整的声音信息，要么使用过滤版本，从录音中删除部分细节。通过这种方式，可以测量音调和分词信息对单词识别的贡献。对声调和会话语言的进一步理解有助于第二语言普通话教学法的发展，这种教学法非常强调学习产生和识别声调，这对许多美国学生来说并不容易。音调实现的细节对于人类语言技术的进步也至关重要，例如自动语音识别，其最终目标是编程计算机以理解自然产生的语音，如对话。EAPSI奖学金的广泛影响包括为研究员提供美国以外的第一手研究经验；介绍该地区的科学、科学政策和科学基础设施；以及对社会、文化和语言的了解。这些活动符合美国国家科学基金会的目标，即在其科学家、工程师和教育工作者的职业生涯早期培养国际合作，从而确保美国科学劳动力具有全球意识。此外，研究完成后发表的结果将向相关领域的语言学家和研究人员广泛传播这些发现。

This action funds Daniel Brenner of the University of Arizona to conduct a research project in the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences area during the summer of 2013 at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. The project title is "Mandarin Tone Perception in Conversational and Read Speech." The host scientist is Dr. HU Fang.In Mandarin, words are distinguished not only by segments ([ba] 'to pull out' vs. [pa] 'to climb'), but also by tone, the pattern of vocal pitch overlaid on the syllable ([pa] with rising pitch, 'to climb'; [pa] with falling pitch, 'to fear'). This project describes the relationship between tones as produced in conversation to those in careful speech, and how those differences affect listeners' perception of tones in the two speech styles. In the first phase of the project, recordings are made of Mandarin speakers in conversation and reading a list of words, and the acoustics of the two kinds of tone productions will be compared. In a second phase, Mandarin-speaking subjects perform a perception task on those words, either with full acoustic information, or with a filtered version that removes segmental detail from the recordings. In this way, a measurement of the contributions of tone and segmental information to the identification of words can be made. Further understanding of tone and conversational speech enable developments in second language Mandarin pedagogy, where a great deal of emphasis is placed on learning to produce and detect tones, an endeavor that does not come easily to many American students. The details of tonal realizations are also vital for progress in human language technologies such as automatic speech recognition, where the ultimate goal is to program computers to understand naturally produced speech, as in conversation.Broader impacts of an EAPSI fellowship include providing the Fellow a first-hand research experience outside the U.S.; an introduction to the science, science policy, and scientific infrastructure of the respective location; and an orientation to the society, culture and language. These activities meet the NSF goal to educate for international collaborations early in the career of its scientists, engineers, and educators, thus ensuring a globally aware U.S. scientific workforce. Furthermore, publication of the results following completion of the study will disseminate the findings widely to linguists and researchers in related fields.