Objective Evaluation of the Neutral Tone in Putonghua Proficiency Testing

Correct pronunciation of the neutral tone (TO) is an important factor in assessing Putonghua (PTH) proficiency levels. The T0 objective evaluation system is an important subsystem of the Putonghua proficiency test (PPT) objective evaluation system. After analyzing the T0 features, this paper presents a pitch normalizing algorithm which reflects auditory sensitivity. Seven features are selected as evaluation parameters. Using the Gaussian mixture models (GMM) or the multi layer perceptron (MLP) Models, data drawn from 43 individuals´ utterances is tested. The accuracy of the objective evaluations described above is 89% identical to that usually achieved in subjective evaluation