Phonetic fusion in Chinese conversational speech

This paper presents a corpus-based perspective on the phonetic fusion of disyllabic words in a Chinese conversational speech corpus. Four categorical types that reflect the phonological features of reduction degrees are automatically derived from gradient, acoustic properties. A transcription experiment is conducted with the most common disyllabic words. Both automatic derivation by acoustic signals and human transcription by perceptual judgment refer to the same sound inventory. We have shown that the complete form of fusion occurring in conversation need not be legitimate syllables and it appears consistently in the form of syllable merger that represents a group of phonetic variants.