Prosodic realization of tonal target and F0 peak alignment in Mandarin neutral tone

Neutral tone in Mandarin is generally believed to lack tonal identity and exhibit more variability in its phonetic realization. We examined the tonal target of neutral tone in a prosodic word consisting of a full syllable (S) and one, two, or three neutral-tone syllables. In the experiment, the test words, presented in isolation and embedded in a carrier sentence, were read in two intonation patterns: declarative and interrogative. The results showed: (1) the tonal target of neutral tone is L(ow) at the end of the intonation phrase in declarative intonation and M(id) in question intonation; (2) its phonetic realization is influenced by intonation patterns, the tone of S and the number of neutral-tone syllables in the prosodic word; (3) the influence of the tone of S is more robust in shorter sequences than in longer ones with three neutral-tone syllables; (4) placement of the F0 peak in T2 (LH) and the neutral tone immediately following T3 (L) is susceptible to the number of neutral-tone syllables. It seems clear from our study that while the tonal target of neutral tone is related to prosodic structure, its actual F0 scaling is sensitive to prosodic manipulations such as intonation patterns and prosodic word length. In addition, tonelessness of neutral tone allows for more freedom in the alignment of the F0 peak, whose temporal coordination with its segmental host is, nevertheless, subject to both phonological and phonetic constraints.

F0 Peak Alignment, F0 Peak Location, and Focus Perception in Taif Arabic

The encoding of focus and its role in Taif Arabic has not been understood fully. A recent production study found significant acoustic differences between syntactically identical utterances with focus and without focus. The current study aims to investigate further F0 peak alignment, F0 peak location and (b) focus perception in Taif Arabic. The acoustic analyses of F0 peak alignment and F0 peak location show that only the F0 peak alignment of the post-focus words was realized earlier than that of their counterparts under neutral-focus condition, and the location of the F0 peak of the stressed syllable of the post-focus words was lower than that of their counterparts in neutral-focus utterances. In focus perception, correct focus identification was 85% for initial focus and 71% for penultimate focus. These findings have implications for both focus typology and language variations.

La entonación de los enunciados aseverativos del español de contacto de hablantes bilingües de San Miguel Canoa, Puebla: una variedad del español mexicano

The aims of this article are a) to describe the tonal configurations used in statements of contact Spanish in the area of San Miguel Canoa, Puebla, and b) to show the relationship between pitch accents and social variables such as gender, age, educational level, and bilingualism of the informants. The analysis of these semi-spontaneous speech utterances showed that i) it is a variety that promotes the use of pitch accents with (very) early-peak alignment, such as H*, L+H* and L+>H*, both in prenuclear and nuclear positions, ii) the nuclear pitch configurations L+H* L% and L+>H* L%, reinforced by the upstep diacritic at times, characterize the statements of broad, narrow and contradiction focus in this variety of Spanish, and iii) the use of pitch accents whose peak its early it is correlated with adults or older people, who have a low or no educational level, and who are usually bilingual Nahuatl-Spanish. These findings contribute to research on prosodic contact and prosody of Mexican Spanish.

Introducing a novel procedure for peak alignment in one-dimensional 1H-NMR spectroscopy: a prerequisite for chemometric analyses of wine samples

In the current work, a novel procedure for correcting the peak drifts of 1H-NMR was introduced that involved mapping NMR spectra on a common chemical shift axis followed by interval-wisely applying the correlation optimized warping (COW) algorithm.