scholarly journals The dynamics of intonation: categorical and continuous variation in an attractor-based model

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Roessig ◽  
Doris Mücke ◽  
Martine Grice
Keyword(s):  
Dynamical Systems ◽  
Relative Stability ◽  
Systems Approach ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Continuous Variation ◽  
Pitch Accent ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Focus Marking ◽  
Pitch Accents

The framework of dynamical systems offers powerful tools to understand the relation between stability and variability in human cognition in general and in speech in particular. In the current paper, we propose a dynamical systems approach to the description of German nuclear pitch accents in focus marking to account for both the categorical as well as the continuous variation found in intonational data. We report on results from 27 native speakers and employ an attractor landscape to represent pitch accent types in terms of f0 measures in a continuous dimension. We demonstrate how the same system can account for both the categorical variation (relative stability of one prosodic category) as well as the continuous variation (detailed modifications within one prosodic category). The model is able to capture the qualitative aspects of focus marking such as falling vs. rising pitch accent types as well as the quantitative aspects such as less rising vs. more rising accents in one system by means of scaling a single parameter. Furthermore, speaker group specific strategies are analysed and modelled as differences in the scaling of this parameter. Thus, the model contributes to the ongoing debate about the relation between phonetics and phonology and the importance of variation in language and speech.

scholarly journals Perception in Black and White: Effects of Intonational Variables and Filtering Conditions on Sociolinguistic Judgments With Implications for ASR

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole R. Holliday
Keyword(s):  
Speech Recognition ◽  
Speech Synthesis ◽  
Pitch Accent ◽  
Social Judgments ◽  
Black And White ◽  
African American Language ◽  
Focus Marking ◽  
Computational Systems ◽  
Pitch Accents

This study tests the effects of intonational contours and filtering conditions on listener judgments of ethnicity to arrive at a more comprehensive understanding on how prosody influences these judgments, with implications for austomatic speech recognition systems as well as speech synthesis. In a perceptual experiment, 40 American English listeners heard phrase-long clips which were controlled for pitch accent type and focus marking. Each clip contained either two H* (high) or two L+H* (low high) pitch accents and a L-L% (falling) boundary tone, and had also previously been labelled for broad or narrow focus. Listeners rated clips in two tasks, one with unmodified stimuli and one with stimuli lowpass filtered at 400 Hz, and were asked to judge whether the speaker was “Black” or “White”. In the filtered condition, tokens with the L+H* pitch accent were more likely to be rated as “Black”, with an interaction such that broad focus enhanced this pattern, supporting earlier findings that listeners may perceive African American Language as having more variation in possible pitch accent meanings. In the unfiltered condition, tokens with the L+H* pitch accent were less likely to be rated as Black, with no effect of focus, likely due to the fact that listeners relied more heavily on available segmental information in this condition. These results enhance our understanding of cues listeners rely on in making social judgments about speakers, especially in ethnic identification and linguistic profiling, by highlighting perceptual differences due to listening environment as well as predicted meaning of specific intonational contours. They also contribute to our understanding of the role of how human listeners interpret meaning within a holistic context, which has implications for the construction of computational systems designed to replicate the properties of natural language. In particular, they have important applicability to speech synthesis and speech recognition programs, which are often limited in their capacities due to the fact that they do not make such holistic sociolinguistic considerations of the meanings of input or output speech.

Tonal Crowding Effects In Buenos Aires Spanish: An Experimental Study

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip A. Thornberry
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Study ◽  
Buenos Aires ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Current Knowledge ◽  
Pitch Accent ◽  
Crowding Effects ◽  
Pitch Accents ◽  
Insight Into

AbstractThis study provides insight into the consequences of tonal crowding in Buenos Aires Spanish, enriching our current knowledge of the phonetic phenomena in this variety of Spanish. The present work is an experimental study that elicits 270 broad focus declarative statements in varying degrees of tonal crowding from five native speakers of this dialect. To achieve this, the number of unstressed syllables between stressed syllables in content words was manipulated to observe how the scaling and alignment of L and H tones, rise times, and syllable durations in prenuclear pitch accents all respond in different phonetic conditions. The results indicate that temporal and scaling reorganization is a prerequisite for the realization of two pitch accents in tonal crowding situations in Buenos Aires Spanish, though in ways differing from other dialects of Spanish. The first pitch accent remains largely unaffected, while the second pitch accent appears to be deaccented entirely.

Dynamic localization in second language English and German

2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 400-418 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARY GRANTHAM O’BRIEN ◽  
CAROLINE FÉRY
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Pitch Accent ◽  
The Other ◽  
Final Position ◽  
Dynamic Localization ◽  
L1 And L2 ◽  
Grammatical Structures ◽  
Pitch Accents

Marking new and given constituents requires speakers to use morphosyntactic and phonological cues within a discourse context. The current study uses a dynamic localization paradigm whereby German and English native speakers, with the other language as a second language (L2), describe constellations of pictures. In each picture a new or reintroduced animal is localized relative to other animals, thereby allowing for control of newness vs. givenness of animals. Participants completed the task in their native language (L1) and L2. English native speakers use predominantly canonical word order and often mark the new object with a falling pitch accent. German native speakers use a given-before-new word order, even when this is non-canonical, and they use a rising pitch accent in non-final position. The results indicate that speakers easily transfer unmarked grammatical structures – both word order and pitch accents – from their L1 to their L2.

scholarly journals Information Structure Preferences in Focus-Sensitive Ellipsis: How Defaults Persist

2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 480-512 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesse A. Harris ◽  
Katy Carlson
Keyword(s):  
Auditory Processing ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Pitch Accent ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Focus Structure ◽  
Non Local ◽  
Default Position ◽  
Focus Marking ◽  
Pitch Accents

We compare the roles of overt accent and default focus marking in processing ellipsis structures headed by focus-sensitive coordinators (such as Danielle couldn’t pass the quiz, let alone the final/Kayla). In a small auditory corpus study of radio transcripts, we establish that such structures overwhelmingly occur with contrastive pitch accents on the correlate and remnant ( the quiz and the final, or Danielle and Kayla), and that there is a strong bias to pair the remnant with the most local plausible correlate in production. In two auditory naturalness ratings experiments, we observe that marking a non-local correlate with contrastive pitch accent moderates, but does not fully overturn, the bias for local correlates in comprehension. We propose that the locality preference is due to a sentence-final default position for sentence accent, and that auditory processing is subject to “enduring focus,” in which default positions for focus continue to influence the focus structure of the sentence even in the presence of overt accents. The importance of these results for models of auditory processing and of the processing of remnants in ellipsis structures is discussed.

scholarly journals The Role of Prosodic Breaks and Pitch Accents in Grouping Words during On-line Sentence Processing

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (9) ◽  
pp. 2447-2467 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Bögels ◽  
Herbert Schriefers ◽  
Wietske Vonk ◽  
Dorothee J. Chwilla
Keyword(s):  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Pitch Accent ◽  
Semantic Interpretation ◽  
N400 Effect ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
On Line ◽  
Group Words ◽  
Pitch Accents

The present study addresses the question whether accentuation and prosodic phrasing can have a similar function, namely, to group words in a sentence together. Participants listened to locally ambiguous sentences containing object- and subject-control verbs while ERPs were measured. In Experiment 1, these sentences contained a prosodic break, which can create a certain syntactic grouping of words, or no prosodic break. At the disambiguation, an N400 effect occurred when the disambiguation was in conflict with the syntactic grouping created by the break. We found a similar N400 effect without the break, indicating that the break did not strengthen an already existing preference. This pattern held for both object- and subject-control items. In Experiment 2, the same sentences contained a break and a pitch accent on the noun following the break. We argue that the pitch accent indicates a broad focus covering two words [see Gussenhoven, C. On the limits of focus projection in English. In P. Bosch & R. van der Sandt (Eds.), Focus: Linguistic, cognitive, and computational perspectives. Cambridge: University Press, 1999], thus grouping these words together. For object-control items, this was semantically possible, which led to a “good-enough” interpretation of the sentence. Therefore, both sentences were interpreted equally well and the N400 effect found in Experiment 1 was absent. In contrast, for subject-control items, a corresponding grouping of the words was impossible, both semantically and syntactically, leading to processing difficulty in the form of an N400 effect and a late positivity. In conclusion, accentuation can group words together on the level of information structure, leading to either a semantically “good-enough” interpretation or a processing problem when such a semantic interpretation is not possible.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document