Perceived phrasing in French

2018 ◽  
pp. 216-238
Author(s):  
Caroline L. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Main Clause ◽  
Prosodic Structure ◽  
Prosodic Structures

Studies of prosodic structure in French have tended to concentrate on production in order to identify what levels of phrasing speakers differentiate. But what are listeners hearing? The chapter details the examination of some specific structures (dislocations and focused phrases) to see whether listeners’ perceptions align with the prosodic structures that have been proposed. The approach used is Rapid Prosody Transcription, in which untrained listeners are asked to identify words they perceive as prominent or places where they perceive a break in the flow of speech (phrasal boundary). Descriptions of French agree that prominences occur either initially or finally in the smallest-sized phrase. While the majority of locations where listeners marked boundaries were perceived as preceded by a prominent word, because more prominences than boundaries were marked these did not necessarily co-occur with boundaries. Dislocated words were perceived as both prominent and separated from the main clause by a boundary.

Sisterhood in prosodic branching

Phonology ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Myrberg
Keyword(s):  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Main Clause ◽  
Prosodic Structure ◽  
Present Account ◽  
Markedness Constraint ◽  
Prosodic Structures ◽  
Embedded Clause

This article discusses the syntax–prosody interface, drawing on evidence from Stockholm Swedish. It is shown that a Swedish main clause containing an embedded clause has three prosodic correlates, two of which are non-isomorphic to the syntactic bracketing. However, two coordinated clauses have only one – isomorphic – prosodic correlate. Optimality-theoretic constraints (Prince & Smolensky 1993) are used to derive this variation. A new markedness constraint, EqualSisters, is argued to be responsible for a preference for flat prosodic structures. This constraint requires that sister nodes in prosodic structure belong to the same prosodic category, and therefore sometimes conflicts with match constraints, which call for syntax–prosody correspondence (Selkirk 2009, 2011). When high-ranked, EqualSisters forces syntax–prosody non-isomorphism if the input syntactic structure contains embedding, whereas full isomorphism is predicted in coordinated structures. The previously suggested markedness constraints Non-recursivity and Exhaustivity (Selkirk 1996) cannot replace EqualSisters, and in the present account are rendered redundant.

scholarly journals Generating Tailored, Comparative Descriptions with Contextually Appropriate Intonation

2010 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael White ◽  
Robert A. J. Clark ◽  
Johanna D. Moore
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Prediction Models ◽  
User Preferences ◽  
Prosodic Structure ◽  
Generation Process ◽  
Expert Evaluation ◽  
Unit Selection ◽  
Prosodic Structures ◽  
Prosody Prediction ◽  
Surface Realization

Generating responses that take user preferences into account requires adaptation at all levels of the generation process. This article describes a multi-level approach to presenting user-tailored information in spoken dialogues which brings together for the first time multi-attribute decision models, strategic content planning, surface realization that incorporates prosody prediction, and unit selection synthesis that takes the resulting prosodic structure into account. The system selects the most important options to mention and the attributes that are most relevant to choosing between them, based on the user model. Multiple options are selected when each offers a compelling trade-off. To convey these trade-offs, the system employs a novel presentation strategy which straightforwardly lends itself to the determination of information structure, as well as the contents of referring expressions. During surface realization, the prosodic structure is derived from the information structure using Combinatory Categorial Grammar in a way that allows phrase boundaries to be determined in a flexible, data-driven fashion. This approach to choosing pitch accents and edge tones is shown to yield prosodic structures with significantly higher acceptability than baseline prosody prediction models in an expert evaluation. These prosodic structures are then shown to enable perceptibly more natural synthesis using a unit selection voice that aims to produce the target tunes, in comparison to two baseline synthetic voices. An expert evaluation and f0 analysis confirm the superiority of the generator-driven intonation and its contribution to listeners' ratings.

scholarly journals On the Left-/Right-Branching Asymmetry in Mandarin Tone 3 Sandhi

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fulang Chen
Keyword(s):  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Prosodic Structure ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Restricted Version ◽  
Strong Start ◽  
Prosodic Structures ◽  
Match Theory ◽  
Mandarin Tone

In Mandarin, a left-/right-branching asymmetry is observed when the Tone 3 Sandhi (T3S) process interacts with the syntactic structure of an expression: while expressions that have a left-branching syntactic structure only have a non-alternating sandhi pattern in which all but the rightmost T3 is changed to the sandhi tone, for expressions that have a right-branching syntactic structure various sandhi patterns are possible. This paper proposes that T3S applies cyclically bottom-up on a prosodic structure matched from the syntactic structure of an expression, along the lines of the Match Theory of syntactic-prosodic constituency correspondence (Selkirk 2011). The interaction of Match Phrase constraints and Strong Strong Start, which is a more restricted version of Selkirk’s (2011) Strong Start constraint, predicts that different prosodic structures are possible outputs for a right-branching expression, while for a left-branching expression the only possible output is a left-branching prosodic structure. The various possible sandhi patterns for a right-branching expression and the non-alternating sandhi pattern for a left-branching expression are derived when T3S applies cyclically bottom-up on the proposed prosodic structures.

Spontaneous speech intonation in (European) Portuguese: an example of experimental analysis with a macrosyntactic view

2012 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippe Martin
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Analysis ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Spontaneous Speech ◽  
Prosodic Structure ◽  
Flat Structure ◽  
Stressed Syllable ◽  
Complex Contour ◽  
Melodic Contour ◽  
European Portuguese ◽  
Prosodic Structures

Besides studies based on illocution criteria (Raso Mello, 2009), most studies on Portuguese intonation pertain mainly to read speech, and use for a large part either the autosegmental-metrical framework -- AM - (Frota al., 2007) or, for a small number, a phonosyntactic model (Martin, 1999, 2004). In papers pertaining to the last category, there is a clear assumption that the sentence prosodic structure is independent but associated to syntax. In this view, prosodic contours located on or around stressed syllables function as phonological markers of this prosodic structure. Experimental studies describe for example a high and rising melodic contour located on the first stressed syllable of a subject NP, and either a rising contour (on the stressed syllable) or a complex contour (falling on the stressed syllable and rising on the last syllable) of the last unit of a SN syntagm. Whereas this description is essentially compatible with those given in the AM framework, the validity of AM theory may be questionable if extended to non-prepared (spontaneous) speech. In such cases, a macrosyntactic approach proves to be an effective tool, as it envisions the sentence as a sequence of macrosegments, syntactically well formed in the classical sense, but whose relations of parataxis or dependency with each other are partially determined by the sentence prosodic structure. This paper presents a short example of analysis conducted in this framework, showing the interaction between macrosyntactic and prosodic structures, the latter operation (re)structuring the sequence of macrosegments organized (by definition) in a flat structure in the sentence.

The acquisition of phonological alternations: The case of the Mandarin tone sandhi process

2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (6) ◽  
pp. 1495-1526 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ping Tang ◽  
Ivan Yuen ◽  
Nan Xu Rattanasone ◽  
Liqun Gao ◽  
Katherine Demuth
Keyword(s):  
Acoustic Analysis ◽  
Prosodic Structure ◽  
Surface Form ◽  
Tone Sandhi ◽  
Phonological Process ◽  
Phonological Processes ◽  
Prosodic Structures ◽  
Mandarin Tone

AbstractPhonological processes can pose a learning challenge for children, where the surface form for an underlying contrast may vary as a function of the phonological environment. Mandarin tone sandhi is a complex phonological process that requires knowledge about both the tonal and the prosodic context in which it applies. The present study explored the productive knowledge of tone sandhi processes by 108 3- to 5-year-old Mandarin-speaking children and 33 adults. Participants were asked to produce novel tone sandhi compounds in different tonal contexts and prosodic structures. Acoustic analysis showed that 3-year-olds have abstracted the tone sandhi process and can productively apply it to novel disyllabic words across tonal contexts. However, even 5-year-olds still differed from adults in applying tone sandhi in response to the trisyllabic prosodic structure. The results are discussed in terms of the factors that influence how tone sandhi processes, and phonological alternations more generally, are acquired.

The Role of Phrase-Level Prosody in Speech Production Planning

2020 ◽  
pp. 521-538
Author(s):  
Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel
Keyword(s):  
Speech Production ◽  
Production Planning ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Surface Characteristics ◽  
Prosodic Structure ◽  
Acoustic Cues ◽  
The Past ◽  
Prosodic Structures ◽  
Context Specific

It has long been recognized that speakers organize the words of a spoken utterance into phrases, and accent some words and syllables rather than others. For many years these characteristics were regarded as reflections of the syntax structure of the sentence, signalled by acoustic cues to grouping and prominence, such as fundamental frequency (f0), duration, and amplitude. In the past decades, however, it has become clear that a second set of structures, parallel to but independent of the syntactic structure of a sentence, governs the context-specific surface characteristics of any particular spoken utterance of a sentence, and that the cues signalling these prosodic structures are many. These hierarchical prosodic structures are reflected in the intonation and timing contour of the utterance, and also in the surface phonetic shapes of its words. Consequently, models of speech production planning have begun to incorporate prosodic structure at the phrase level and higher as a governing framework.

Impact of prosodic structure and information density on dynamic formant trajectories in German

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erika Brandt ◽  
Frank Zimmerer ◽  
Bistra Andreeva ◽  
Bernd Möbius
Keyword(s):  
Prosodic Structure ◽  
Information Density
Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document