Cued Speech (CS) is a communication system developed for deaf people, which exploits hand cues to complement speechreading at the phonetic level. Currently, it is estimated that CS has been adapted to over 60 languages; however, no official CS system is available for Mandarin Chinese. This article proposes a novel and efficient Mandarin Chinese CS system, satisfying the main criterion that the hand coding constitutes a complement to the lips movements. We propose to code vowels [i, u, y] as semiconsonants when they are followed by other Mandarin finals, which reduces the number of Mandarin finals to be coded from 36 to 16. We establish a coherent similarity between Mandarin Chinese and French vowels for the remaining 16 vowels, which allows us to take advantage of the French CS system. Furthermore, by investigating the lips viseme distribution based on a new corpus, an optimal allocation of the 16 Mandarin vowels to different hand positions is obtained. A Gaussian classifier was used to evaluate the average separability of different allocated vowel groups, which gives 92.08\%, 92.33\%, and 92.73\% for the three speakers, respectively. The consonants are mainly designed according to their similarities with the French CS system, as well as some considerations on the special Mandarin consonants. In our system, the tones of Mandarin are coded with head movements.

中文翻译：

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普通话提示语音的试点研究

Cued Speech (CS) 是一种为聋人开发的交流系统，它利用手部提示来补充语音级别的语音阅读。目前，估计CS已经适配了60多种语言；但是，没有官方的 CS 系统可用于普通话。本文提出了一种新颖高效的普通话 CS 系统，满足手部编码构成嘴唇动作补充的主要标准。我们建议将元音 [i, u, y] 编码为半辅音，当它们后面是其他普通话韵母时，这将需要编码的普通话韵母的数量从 36 减少到 16。我们建立了普通话和法语元音之间的连贯相似性：剩下的 16 个元音，这让我们可以利用法语 CS 系统。此外，通过研究基于新语料库的嘴唇视位分布，获得了 16 个普通话元音在不同手部位置的最佳分配。高斯分类器用于评估不同分配元音组的平均可分离性，三个说话者的平均可分离性分别为 92.08\%、92.33\% 和 92.73\%。辅音的设计主要是根据它们与法语CS系统的相似性，以及对特殊普通话辅音的一些考虑。在我们的系统中，普通话的音调是用头部运动编码的。分别。辅音的设计主要是根据它们与法语CS系统的相似性，以及对特殊普通话辅音的一些考虑。在我们的系统中，普通话的音调是用头部运动编码的。分别。辅音的设计主要是根据它们与法语CS系统的相似性，以及对特殊普通话辅音的一些考虑。在我们的系统中，普通话的音调是用头部运动编码的。