Respiration features of Chinese learners under self-narration task — The case of learners from Korea, Japan, America and Thailand

Through the methods of physiological experiment in combination with acoustical experiment, the present research investigates the respiration and acoustic features of the Chinese learners during the task of self-narration. Twenty-four Chinese learners from Korea, Japan, America and Thailand are assigned to narrate in Mandarin Chinese. The spontaneous speech respiration which is greatly influenced by the physiological condition, cognitive processing, context and mood state tends to make the respiration curve to be complex. In this condition, compared with Chinese native speakers, different respiratory units have significant differences in inspiration/expiration duration, amplitude and slope in terms of respiratory parameters. The frequency of the abnormal pause is large in great extent, and the position of the abnormal pause is rather flexible, so its different categories correspond to the different respiration forms.