Mandarin Affective Speech

registration: 2008/03/08 02:40:09, last modified: 2016/03/29 09:00:11
title
  • Mandarin Affective Speech
title.abbreviation
  • MASC
title.alternative
  • Mandarin Affective Speech Corpus
creator
  • developer Advance Computing and System Laboratory, College of Computer Science and Technology, Zhejiang University
  • researcher Yingchun Yang, CCNT Lab, College of Computer Science and Technology, Zhejiang University, China (yyc@cs.zju.edu.cn)
  • researcher Zhaohui Wu, CCNT Lab, Zhejiang University (wzh@cs.zju.edu.cn)
  • researcher Tian Wu, CCNT Lab, Zhejiang University (wutian@cs.zju.edu.cn)
  • researcher Dongdong Li, CCNT Lab, Zhejiang University (lidd@cs.zju.edu.cn)
subject
  • emotional speech database
subject.linguisticField
  • cognitive_science
  • computational_linguistics
  • phonology
  • phonetics
subject.monoMultilingual
  • monolingual
subject.resourceSubject
  • corpus speech corpus
description
  • *Introduction*

    Mandarin Affective Speech is a database of emotional speech consisting of audio recordings and corresponding transcripts collected in 2005 at the Advance Computing and System Laboratory, College of Computer Science and Technology, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, People's Republic of China. This corpus was designed with two goals: first, to serve as a tool for linguistic and prosodic feature investigation of emotional expression in Mandarin Chinese; and second, to provide a source of training and test data essential to support research in speaker recognition with affective speech. The speech database was recorded by eliciting speakers to express different emotional states in response to stimuli. The speakers read scenarios designed to elicite an emotional response such as a colleague's mistake for anger, a pleasant trip for elation, a hurry-up scene for panic and a puppy's death for sadness. The five emotional states recorded are characterized as follows:

    * Neutral - Simple statements without any emotion.
    * Anger - A strong feeling of displeasure or hostility.
    * Elation - Be glad or happy because of praise.
    * Panic - A sudden, overpowering terror, often affecting many people at once.
    * Sadness - Affected or characterized by sorrow or unhappiness

    *Data*

    Over 100 speakers participated in the data collection. After screening, recordings from 68 speakers (23 females, 45 males) were used in this corpus. Most of the speakers were in their twenties at the time of collection. Information about the speakers is contained in "SpeakerInfo.doc."

    Subjects were given a text to read that consisted of five phrases, fifteen sentences and two paragraphs designed to generate the emotional speech. The material included all the phonemes in Mandarin. Each subject read the phrases, paragraphs, and sentences portraying the five emotional states: neutral (unemotional), anger, elation, panic and sadness. Altogether this database contains 25,636 utterances. The read material was constructed as follows:

    * 5 phrases - "yes", "no" and three nouns as "apple", "train", "tennis ball". In Chinese, these words contain many different basic vowels and consonants.
    * 20 sentences - These sentences include all the phonemes and most common consonant clusters in Mandarin. The types of sentences are: simple statements, a declarative sentence with an enumeration, general questions (yes/no question), alternative questions, imperative sentences, exclamatory sentences, special questions (whquestions).
    * 2 paragraphs - Two readings, one selected from a famous Chinese novel, and the other stating a normal fact.
    All the data were recorded in a quiet office on an OLYMPUS DM-20 digital voice recorder with a sampling rate of 22050Hz. Afterwards, the recorded voice files were transferred to a personal computer by USB (Universal Serial Bus). The recordings were then converted into monophonic Windows PCM format at 8 kHz sampling frequency and 16 bits resolution.

    Further information about the data and methodology in this corpus is contained in the authors' paper, "MASC: A Speech Corpus in Mandarin for Emotional Analysis and Affective Speaker Recognition," in "MASC.pdf."

    *Samples *

    For an example of the data in this corpus, please listen the following examples:

    * Neutral
    * Anger
    * Elation
description.price *This metadata is only as a guide
description.language
  • English
description.inputDevice
  • OLYMPUS DM-20 digital voice recorder
description.inputEnvironment
  • office_room quiet office rooms
description.speakingStyle
  • read_speech
  • acted_speech
description.speechMode
  • monologue
  • emotional_speech
description.samplingRate
  • 22.05 kHz
description.additionalData
  • analysis_parameter transcripts
  • analysis_parameter 5 different emotional conditions (anger, elation, panic, sadness,neutral)
publisher
contributor
contributor.attribute.author.motherTongue
contributor.attribute.author.dialect
contributor.attribute.author.level
contributor.attribute.author.age
contributor.attribute.author.gender
contributor.attribute.speaker.motherTongue
  • native Members of CCNT lab and students of Zhejiang University, with all having lived in Mainland China since their birth
contributor.attribute.speaker.dialect
  • standard_dialect Majority were trained to speak in standard Mandarin from early childhood.
contributor.attribute.speaker.level
  • amateur College students and lab members
contributor.attribute.speaker.age
  • adult Average age: 21.7 years, with the range from 20 to 30, with 58 speakers in the range between 21 - 24 out of 68 speakers in all
contributor.attribute.speaker.gender
  • male
  • female
contributor.attribute.speaker.number
  • number_of_male_speakers 45
  • number_of_female_speakers 23
  • number_of_total_speakers 68
date.created
  • 2005-08-00 2005-09-00
date.issued
  • 2007-07-17
date.modified
type
  • Sound
  • Text
type.discourseType
  • narrative
type.linguisticType
  • primary_text
type.purpose
  • analysis linguistic and prosodic feature investigation of emotional expression in Mandarin Chinese
  • developing_technologies speaker recognition with affective speech
type.style
  • speech reading: paragraphs from a Chinese novel and the other stating a normal fact portraying the five emotional states
  • speech reading: 5 phrases - "yes", "no", "apple", "train", "tennis ball" in Chinese
  • speech reading: simple statements, a declarative sentence with an enumeration, general questions (yes/no question), alternative questions, imperative sentences, exclamatory sentences, special questions (whquestions) - including all the phonemes and most common consonant clusters in Mandarin, portraying the five emotional states: neutral (unemotional), anger, elation, panic and sadness
type.form
  • fixed 5 phrases - "yes", "no", "apple", "train", "tennis ball" in Chinese
  • fixed 20 sentences - simple statements, a declarative sentence with an enumeration, general questions (yes/no question), alternative questions, imperative sentences, exclamatory sentences, special questions (whquestions) - including all the phonemes and most common consonant clusters in Mandarin, portraying the five emotional states: neutral (unemotional), anger, elation, panic and sadness
  • fixed 2 paragraphs - one from a Chinese novel and the other stating a normal fact portraying the five emotional states: neutral (unemotional), anger, elation, panic and sadness
type.sentence
  • isolated_words 5 phrases - "yes", "no", "apple", "train", "tennis ball" in Chinese
  • short 20 sentences and 2 paragraphs
  • long 20 sentences and 2 paragraphs
type.annotation
  • plain
type.annotationSample
type.sample
format.extent
  • Medium: 1 DVD
  • Sampling Rate at the recording: 22050 Hz
  • Sampling (converted): 8kHz, 16 bit PCM
  • Speakers: 68 speakers (45 males and 23 females)
  • Read materials / speaker: 5 phrases, 20 sentences and 2 paragraphs / speaker
  • Total utterances: 25,636 utterances
  • Total phrases: 5,100 phrases
  • Total paragraphs: 136 paragraphs
  • Corpus size: 881664 KB
format.medium
  • Web Download
format.encoding
format.markup
format.functionality
identifier
identifier.doi
identifier.islrn
  • 378-255-081-778-8
source
language
  • Mandarin Chinese
language.area
  • Asia Mainland China
relation
  • isReferencedBy [???Reference] Yingchun Yang,Zhaohui Wu,Tian Wu,Dongdong Li, 2007, "Mandarin Affective Speech," Linguistic Data Consortium, Philadelphia
relation.utilization *This metadata is automatically extracted
coverage.temporal
  • 2005-08 - 2005-09
coverage.spacial
  • Hangzhou, Zhejiang, Zhonghu, China
rights