同音词发音细节因意义不同而异，可被自动识别。
Letters hide the truth from our eyes: English homophones have meaningfully different phonetic realizations
- 用时长归一谱图分析1.4万条同音词语音，发现语义影响发音细节。
- 同音词如weight/wait在实际发音中存在系统性差异，且可预测。
- 无需转写即可揭示发音真相，适合语音学与自然语言处理研究者。
英语同音词的发音时长已知与其使用频率相关。本研究通过定量分析美国电视新闻广播中的14,000个同音词实例，发现同音词对（如weight和wait）在实际发音中存在系统性差异，这些差异可由语境中的语义决定。即使控制时长变化后，这种差异依然显著。时间归一化谱图成为探测发音细节的高效工具，避免了传统音标转写可能掩盖真实发音的问题。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
The distribution of spoken word duration of English homophones is known to co-vary with frequency of use. This study investigates whether other aspects of the phonetic realization of homophones also differ. A series of quantitative investigations of 14,000 homophone tokens in American television news broadcasts revealed that the tokens of homophone pairs such as \textit{weight} and \textit{wait} have different phonetic realizations, and that these can be predicted from their meanings in utterance context. These systematic differences remain even when taking duration-related variation into account. Time-normalized spectrograms emerged as an excellent tool for probing the fine details of phonetic realization, and obviate the need for phonetic transcriptions, which inevitably hide the phonetic truth from our eyes.
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