A new framework for recognition of Mandarin syllables with tones using sub-syllabic units

Three classes of subsyllabic units for Mandarin syllables are defined, i.e., the initials, the finals, and the transitions. A new structure for Mandarin syllable recognition is developed, in which the tones and base syllables are recognized jointly and a total of 574 subsyllabic unit models will be enough to provide improved recognition performance. This approach has the potential to be extended to continuous Mandarin speech recognition, although the preliminary experiments demonstrated here are based on isolated syllables only.<>