Nuclear pitch accent in American English dialects: Truncation and compression

2014 ◽  
Vol 135 (4) ◽  
pp. 2291-2291
Author(s):  
Ewa Jacewicz ◽  
Robert A. Fox
Keyword(s):  
American English ◽  
Pitch Accent

scholarly journals Using the ToBI transcription to record the intonation of Slovene

Linguistica ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 169-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jana Volk
Keyword(s):  
Fundamental Frequency ◽  
American English ◽  
Spontaneous Speech ◽  
Tone Sequence ◽  
Pitch Accent ◽  
High Tone ◽  
Audio Recording ◽  
The Core ◽  
Low Tone ◽  
Mainstream American English

The paper presents ToBI, a transcription method for prosodic annotation. ToBI is an acronym for Tones and Breaks Indices which first denoted an intonation system developed in the 1990s for annotating intonation and prosody in the database of spoken Mainstream American English. The MAE_ToBI transcription originally consists of six parts – the audio recording of the utterance, the fundamental frequency contour and four parallel tiers for the transcription of tone sequence, ortographic transcription, indication of break indices between words and for additional observations. The core of the transcription, i. e. of the phonological analyses of the intonation pattern, is represented by the tone tier where tonal variation is transcribed by using labels for high tone and low tone where a tone can appear as a pitch accent, phrase accent and boundary tone. Due to its simplicity and flexibility, the system soon began to be used for the prosodic annotation of other variants of English and many other languages, as well as in different non-linguistic fields, leading to the creation of many new ToBI systems adapted to individual languages and dialects. The author is the first to use this method for Slovene, more precisely, for the intonational transcription and analysis of the corpus of spontaneous speech of Slovene Istria, in order to investigate if the ToBi system is useful for the annotation of Slovene and its regional variants.  

scholarly journals Stress shift and early pitch accent placement in lexical items in American English

1994 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 357-388 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Shattuck-Hufnagel ◽  
M. Ostendorf ◽  
K. Ross
Keyword(s):  
American English ◽  
Pitch Accent ◽  
Lexical Items

scholarly journals Phrasing and nuclear configurations in authentic English-accented Spanish

Loquens ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 050
Author(s):  
Eva Estebas-Vilaplana ◽  
Beatriz Blecua
Keyword(s):  
Spanish Text ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
American English ◽  
Spanish Speakers ◽  
Pitch Accent ◽  
The Other ◽  
Foreign Accent ◽  
Frequency Of Occurrence ◽  
Tonal Structure ◽  
Auditory Analysis

This paper examines the differences in the division of intonation phrases and in the tonal structure of the nuclear configuration (i.e., the last pitch accent and the following boundary tone) in imitated and in authentic English-accented Spanish. The same Spanish text was read by four native speakers of American English, who produced the text with a real English foreign accent in Spanish, and six native speakers of Spanish, who read the text twice: in L1 Spanish and in fake English-accented Spanish. An auditory analysis of the data was carried out along with an inspection of the f0 traces aligned with the spectrographic representation and the segmental string. The results showed that the Spanish speakers produce more intonation breaks when they imitate an English accent in Spanish than when they speak L1 Spanish. Furthermore, they adopt the typical tonal structure of Spanish final accents in their fake English-accented productions. The number of prosodic breaks in real and in imitated English-accented Spanish is similar. The nuclear configurations, on the other hand, present more variability and differ in the frequency of occurrence of some patterns. The high occurrence of the fall-rise pattern (L+H* LH%) and the presence of the high-fall contour (L+H* L%) in the English productions may help discriminate an authentic English-accented Spanish from a fake one.

The meaning of intonation in yes-no questions in American English: A corpus study

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 321-368 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Hedberg ◽  
Juan M. Sosa ◽  
Emrah Görgülü
Keyword(s):  
Speech Act ◽  
American English ◽  
Pitch Accent ◽  
Pitch Contour ◽  
Function Word ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
High Rise ◽  
Naturally Occurring

AbstractIn order to investigate the distinct nuances of meaning conveyed by the different intonational contours encountered in yes-no questions in English, we conducted a corpus study of the intonation of 410 naturally occurring spoken interrogative-form yes-no questions in American English. First we annotated the intonation of each question using ToBI and then examined the meaning of each utterance in the context. We found that the low-rise nuclear contour (e.g., L*H-H%) is the unmarked question contour and is by far the most frequently occurring. Yes-no questions with falling intonation (e.g. H*L-L%) do not occur frequently, but when they do, they can be classified in speech act terms as “non-genuine” questions, where one or more felicity conditions on genuine questions are not met. Level questions (e.g., L*H-L%) tend to be “stylized” in meaning and pattern with falling questions in being non-genuine. We also found that the pitch accent on high-rise questions (e.g., H*H-H%), where the final pitch contour starts high and ends higher, tends to mark information that is given in the discourse or a function word. These are syllables that would normally remain unaccented parts of the post-nuclear “tail” of the intonation phrase. This leads us to propose that many such accents are “post-nuclear accents” in the sense of Ladd 2008.

Prosodic realizations of new, given, and corrective referents in the spontaneous speech of toddlers

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Jill C. THORSON ◽  
James L. MORGAN
Keyword(s):  
American English ◽  
Spontaneous Speech ◽  
Pitch Accent ◽  
Speech Task ◽  
Interactive Game ◽  
Acoustic Correlates ◽  
Information Status ◽  
Adults And Children

Abstract Our motivation was to examine how toddler (2;6) and adult speakers of American English prosodically realize information status categories. The aims were three-fold: 1) to analyze how adults phonologically make information status distinctions; 2) to examine how these same categories are signaled in toddlers’ spontaneous speech; and 3) to analyze the three primary acoustic correlates of prosody (F0, intensity, and duration). During a spontaneous speech task designed as an interactive game, a set of target nouns was elicited as one of three types (new, given, corrective). Results show that toddlers primarily used H* across information status categories, with secondary preferences for deaccenting given information and for using L+H* for corrective information. Only duration distinguished information status, and duration, average pitch, and intensity differentiated pitch accent types for both adults and children. Discussion includes how pitch accent selection and input play a role in guiding prosodic realizations of information status.

scholarly journals role of f0 alignment in distinguishing intonation categories: evidence from American english

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-67
Author(s):  
Laura C. Dilley ◽  
Christopher C. Heffner
Keyword(s):  
Fundamental Frequency ◽  
American English ◽  
Pitch Accent ◽  
Stimulus Series ◽  
Temporal Alignment ◽  
Phonological Contrasts ◽  
Category Exemplars

Under the autosegmental-metrical (AM) theory of intonation, the temporal alignment of fundamental frequency (F0) patterns with respect to syllables has been claimed to distinguish pitch accent categories. Several experiments test whether differences in F0 peak or valley alignment in American English phrases would produce evidence consistent with a change from (1) a H* to a H+L* pitch accent, and (2) a L* to a L+H* pitch accent. Four stimulus series were constructed in which F0 peak or valley alignment was shifted across portions of short phrases with varying stress. In Experiment 1, participants discriminated pairs of stimuli in an AX task. In Experiment 2, participants classified stimuli as category exemplars using an AXB task. In Experiment 3, participants imitated stimuli; the alignment of F0 peaks and valleys in their productions was measured. Finally, in Experiment 4, participants judged the relative prominence of initial and final syllables in stimuli to determine whether alignment differences generated a stress shift. The results support the distinctions between H* and H+L* and between L+H* and L*. Moreover, evidence consistent with an additional category not currently predicted by most AM theories was obtained, which is proposed here to be H*+H. The results have implications for understanding phonological contrasts, phonetic interpolation in English intonation, and the transcription of prosodic contrasts in corpus-based analysis.

Addressing African American English in Early Literacy Assessment and Instruction

2008 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 54-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole Patton Terry
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Early Literacy ◽  
American English ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Literacy Skills ◽  
African American English ◽  
Literacy Assessment ◽  
Learning To Read ◽  
Speech Language Pathologist ◽  
Early Literacy Assessment

Abstract Determining how best to address young children's African American English use in formal literacy assessment and instruction is a challenge. Evidence is not yet available to discern which theory best accounts for the relation between AAE use and literacy skills or to delineate which dialect-informed educational practices are most effective for children in preschool and the primary grades. Nonetheless, consistent observations of an educationally significant relation between AAE use and various early literacy skills suggest that dialect variation should be considered in assessment and instruction practices involving children who are learning to read and write. The speech-language pathologist can play a critical role in instituting such practices in schools.

Zero Marking of Past Tense in Child African American English

2014 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 173-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan Lee ◽  
Janna B. Oetting
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American English ◽  
African American English ◽  
Current Paper ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Grammatical Function

Zero marking of the simple past is often listed as a common feature of child African American English (AAE). In the current paper, we review the literature and present new data to help clinicians better understand zero marking of the simple past in child AAE. Specifically, we provide information to support the following statements: (a) By six years of age, the simple past is infrequently zero marked by typically developing AAE-speaking children; (b) There are important differences between the simple past and participle morphemes that affect AAE-speaking children's marking options; and (c) In addition to a verb's grammatical function, its phonetic properties help determine whether an AAE-speaking child will produce a zero marked form.

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