Perception of Prosodic Modulations of Linguistic and Paralinguistic Origin: Evidence From Early Auditory Event-Related Potentials

How listeners handle prosodic cues of linguistic and paralinguistic origin is a central question for spoken communication. In the present EEG study, we addressed this question by examining neural responses to variations in pitch accent (linguistic) and affective (paralinguistic) prosody in Swedish words, using a passive auditory oddball paradigm. The results indicated that changes in pitch accent and affective prosody elicited mismatch negativity (MMN) responses at around 200 ms, confirming the brain’s pre-attentive response to any prosodic modulation. The MMN amplitude was, however, statistically larger to the deviation in affective prosody in comparison to the deviation in pitch accent and affective prosody combined, which is in line with previous research indicating not only a larger MMN response to affective prosody in comparison to neutral prosody but also a smaller MMN response to multidimensional deviants than unidimensional ones. The results, further, showed a significant P3a response to the affective prosody change in comparison to the pitch accent change at around 300 ms, in accordance with previous findings showing an enhanced positive response to emotional stimuli. The present findings provide evidence for distinct neural processing of different prosodic cues, and statistically confirm the intrinsic perceptual and motivational salience of paralinguistic information in spoken communication.

Pitch Accent Distribution and Focus Structure in Taifi Arabic: A Production Study

Prosodic encoding of focus in Taifi Arabic is not yet fully understood. A recent production study found significant acoustic differences between syntactically identical sentences with information focus, contrastive focus and without focus. This paper presents results from a production experiment investigating whether information and contrastive focus have prosodic effects on the pitch-accent distributions. Using question-answer paradigms, 16 native speakers of Taifi Arabic were asked to read three target sentences in different focus conditions. Results reveal that every content word is pitch-accented in utterances with and without focus. However, there are very few cases (23.12%) in which the post-focus words are deaccented. The largest percentage of deaccentuation was observed in the utterances with initial contrastive focus. The results show that focus structures in Taifi Arabic show both deaccentuation and post-focus compression. Therefore, the prosodic realization of focus in Taifi Arabic is different from their counterparts in other Arabic dialects such as Egyptian and Lebanese Arabic. These findings have an important implication for both the prosodic typology and focus typology.

Prosodic Characteristics of Sentences with Communicatively Marked and Communicatively Unmarked Alignment

The paper presents the results from a study of the interaction between intonation and information structure in SVO and OVS sentences with communicatively (un)marked alignment of information structure elements. We analyzed the prosodic features of pre-nuclear and nuclear pitch accents. The information structure elements were characterized using Steedman’s (2000) model which classifies sentence constituents as belonging to one of the following categories: theme-background, theme-focus, rheme-background and rheme-focus. Our study found that unmarked and marked alignment has no effect on the pitch range of the rheme-focus. In cases of communicatively unmarked alignment, the pitch range of the theme-background (and rheme-background) group in OVS sentences is wider than in SVO sentences. Word order has no effect on the duration of the accented syllable. Topicalized constituents belonging to the theme-background in OVS sentences with unmarked alignment form separate intermediate phrases. In cases of marked alignment, the rheme-focus ends with a phrase accent and sometimes a pause. The rheme-background and rheme-focus always take a pitch accent, whereas the theme-background is marked by a pitch accent only in cases of communicatively unmarked alignment. The theme-background is deaccented when the sentence is communicatively marked.

Expanding the gestural model of lexical tone: evidence from two dialects of Serbian

Featural and gestural models of tone differ on the degree to which they include timing information in the representation. However, both assume some kind of simultaneity between tones and their tone-bearing units, where featural models emphasize the role of acoustic relationships and gestural models instead emphasize articulatory coordination. We present the results of two acoustic production studies on two dialects of Serbian, a lexical pitch accent language. In the Belgrade dialect, pitch accents are aligned relatively late in the tone-bearing unit, while in the Valjevo dialect, pitch accents are phonetically retracted, sometimes into the preceding syllable. We varied the syllable onsets of tone-bearing units in falling (experiment 1) and rising (experiment 2) pitch accents, and measured the effects on F0 contours. Despite these differences in phonetic alignment, the phonological system is the same in both dialects. We argue that this apparent mismatch between the phonology and phonetics can be expressed straightforwardly in the Articulatory Phonology framework by allowing tone gestures to coordinate with other gestures in all the ways that segmental gestures can, rather than restricting tone to c-center coordination.

Word-initial consonant–vowel coordination in a lexical pitch-accent language

Previous research has acknowledged the effect of prosody on inter-gestural coordination, but specifically the effect of tones is still understudied. This paper has a two-fold purpose. First, it aims to explore effects of the Swedish word accents on word-initial consonant–vowel (CV) coarticulation. Second, it aims to revisit the existing evidence for tonal integration. Based on Articulatory Phonology, it has been suggested that tones – in tone languages – are integrated in the gestural organization of a syllable-initial CV sequence in the same manner as would an additional consonant (CCV), indicated by a time lag between the gestural onsets of the C and the V gesture (CV onset time lag). However, we argue that the existing evidence is inconclusive, because previous cross-linguistic research has used small-scale data sets (one to seven speakers), and we still lack a well-grounded consensus on how gestural onsets are to be measured. This study uses Electromagnetic Articulography (EMA) to investigate word-initial CV coordination in a lexical pitch-accent language (Swedish) with a binary tonal word accent distinction: a tonal fall and a tonal rise, respectively. A selection of 13 spatial, temporal or coordinative measures of bilabial and tongue body data from 19 speakers, and acoustic f o data, were examined to study the CV sequence /ma/. Mixed effects regression models revealed a longer tongue body movement in the rising tone context and small but significant differences in tongue body height, in the closing and the opening of the lips, as well as in the CV onset time lag between the two tonal contexts. We argue that these effects are biomechanical in nature, due to the physiological connections between the tongue, the jaw, and the larynx. In addition, our results suggest either synchronized CV onsets or a CV onset time lag (as in tone languages), depending on the timing landmarks used. In order to evaluate such results as evidence for or against the integration of tone in CV coarticulation, we argue that future research needs to compare data from a variety of languages using a considerable number of speakers. The present study provides new reference values for such comparisons.

Aspects of New Zealand English Intonation and Its Meanings: an Experimental Investigation of Forms and Contrasts

<p>The first aim of this thesis was to examine the form of New Zealand English intonation. The results of the first series of experiments illustrated several distinctive features of NZE intonation and the preferential tonal use within this language variety. The results from the first experiment suggests that NZE intonation can be characterised as having a narrow pitch range within the phrase and a wide pitch range at the end of the phrase in relation to British English. The findings in the second analysis illustrate that tonal composition, not sentence type affects the pitch range that NZE speaker uses. In addition to pitch range preferences, NZE speakers were also found to prefer an H*L-L% nuclear tonal composition on statements and an L*L-H% for two types of questions when conversational cues were not required by the task type. The second aim of the thesis was to define the tonal features which may adequately describe the semantic contrasts used in this variety. Five experiments were carried out with this aim in mind. The results revealed that NZE listeners use the height of pitch target values when interpreting the meaning of intonation and that the heights of three tonal constituents would be useful in notating the semantic contrasts in this language variety. First, the pitch accent target is used in this variety to indicate speaker involvement, whereby higher (H*) or later (L+H*) pitch accent targets indicate a greater degree of involvement than lower (L*) or earlier targets (H*), respectively. This claim was supported by a production experiment (Chapter 5) in which speakers were asked to convey contrasting meanings on identical utterances. The results were such that higher and later pitch peaks were produced to convey concern, emphasis and an impressed attitude, while lower and earlier pitch accent peaks indicated an absence of these three meanings. Further support for this claim was provided in a perception experiment (Chapter 7), which investigated how listeners interpret conversational markers indicating discourse completeness. The results show that NZE listeners interpret higher H* targets as indicating speaker involvement and, subsequently, listener-oriented turn cues. However, a non-emphatic H*, or a high pitch accent which is lower in pitch than a preceding high pitch accent, does not convey such cues. Second, the boundary target is used to contrast continuation with high phrase-final targets and finality with low phrase-final targets in NZE. This assertion was supported by a perception experiment (Chapter 6) which examined categorical boundaries determined by the boundary tone height. The results suggest that there is at least one categorical boundary at the IP-Final position, which is marked by the pitch movement to the boundary target from the preceding H*. In addition, the semantic contrast of the boundary target height was illustrated in two experiments. First, a production experiment (Chapter 5) illustrated how NZE speakers indicate conversational continuation cues and concern with high boundaries whereas low boundaries indicated conversational cessation cues and a lack of concern. A separate perception experiment (Chapter 7) showed that NZE listeners interpret higher boundary targets as speaker continuation cues and listener-oriented speaking cues whereas lower boundary targets again indicated conversational cessation cues for the speaker and to the listener. Third, the phrase accent may prove useful in distinguishing a further semantic contrast used in this language variety, with a level pitch movement from H* to the IP-Final boundary target categorised with the H% stimuli (suggested in Chapter 6) while the distinction between H-L% and L-L% may be best defined as a pitch movement which does not fall to the F0 minimum and a movement which does fall to this low value (Chapter 5). Although the existence of a phrase accent could not be proved in this thesis, the results illustrate support for this tonal feature.</p>

Aspects of New Zealand English Intonation and Its Meanings: an Experimental Investigation of Forms and Contrasts

<p>The first aim of this thesis was to examine the form of New Zealand English intonation. The results of the first series of experiments illustrated several distinctive features of NZE intonation and the preferential tonal use within this language variety. The results from the first experiment suggests that NZE intonation can be characterised as having a narrow pitch range within the phrase and a wide pitch range at the end of the phrase in relation to British English. The findings in the second analysis illustrate that tonal composition, not sentence type affects the pitch range that NZE speaker uses. In addition to pitch range preferences, NZE speakers were also found to prefer an H*L-L% nuclear tonal composition on statements and an L*L-H% for two types of questions when conversational cues were not required by the task type. The second aim of the thesis was to define the tonal features which may adequately describe the semantic contrasts used in this variety. Five experiments were carried out with this aim in mind. The results revealed that NZE listeners use the height of pitch target values when interpreting the meaning of intonation and that the heights of three tonal constituents would be useful in notating the semantic contrasts in this language variety. First, the pitch accent target is used in this variety to indicate speaker involvement, whereby higher (H*) or later (L+H*) pitch accent targets indicate a greater degree of involvement than lower (L*) or earlier targets (H*), respectively. This claim was supported by a production experiment (Chapter 5) in which speakers were asked to convey contrasting meanings on identical utterances. The results were such that higher and later pitch peaks were produced to convey concern, emphasis and an impressed attitude, while lower and earlier pitch accent peaks indicated an absence of these three meanings. Further support for this claim was provided in a perception experiment (Chapter 7), which investigated how listeners interpret conversational markers indicating discourse completeness. The results show that NZE listeners interpret higher H* targets as indicating speaker involvement and, subsequently, listener-oriented turn cues. However, a non-emphatic H*, or a high pitch accent which is lower in pitch than a preceding high pitch accent, does not convey such cues. Second, the boundary target is used to contrast continuation with high phrase-final targets and finality with low phrase-final targets in NZE. This assertion was supported by a perception experiment (Chapter 6) which examined categorical boundaries determined by the boundary tone height. The results suggest that there is at least one categorical boundary at the IP-Final position, which is marked by the pitch movement to the boundary target from the preceding H*. In addition, the semantic contrast of the boundary target height was illustrated in two experiments. First, a production experiment (Chapter 5) illustrated how NZE speakers indicate conversational continuation cues and concern with high boundaries whereas low boundaries indicated conversational cessation cues and a lack of concern. A separate perception experiment (Chapter 7) showed that NZE listeners interpret higher boundary targets as speaker continuation cues and listener-oriented speaking cues whereas lower boundary targets again indicated conversational cessation cues for the speaker and to the listener. Third, the phrase accent may prove useful in distinguishing a further semantic contrast used in this language variety, with a level pitch movement from H* to the IP-Final boundary target categorised with the H% stimuli (suggested in Chapter 6) while the distinction between H-L% and L-L% may be best defined as a pitch movement which does not fall to the F0 minimum and a movement which does fall to this low value (Chapter 5). Although the existence of a phrase accent could not be proved in this thesis, the results illustrate support for this tonal feature.</p>

The prosodic properties of narrow information focus in Central Mexican Spanish: Pitch accents, de-emphasis and phrasing

This paper investigates the different prosodic strategies used for the marking of information focus in Central Mexican Spanish. For this purpose, we carried out a study of the prosodic properties of information focus both in clause final position and in situ. Our results show important differences when compared to other varieties of Spanish. Specifically, we observe that the most frequent accent signaling information focus is a monotonal pitch accent (L* or !H*) and not L+H*. Furthermore, in many cases we observe that the pitch accent is not the only mechanism used to signal the focus: this is because we observe the presence of prosodic edges to the left of the focus, presumably functioning as an additional prosodic cue to identify it. Additionally, while we do not observe deaccenting of post-focal material, we do observe a sequence of non-rising forms (a flat pattern or “de-emphasis”) following the pitch accent that signals an in situ information focus forced by the test. With respect to phonological phrasing, our results confirm the analysis in Prieto (2006), where it is proposed that syntactic constituency is not the primary factor that regulates phrasing in Spanish.