Interaction between Phrasal Structure and Vowel Tenseness in German: An Acoustic and Articulatory Study

Phrase-final lengthening affects the segments preceding a prosodic boundary. This prosodic variation is generally assumed to be independent of the phonemic identity. We refer to this as the ‘uniform lengthening hypothesis’ (ULH). However, in German, lax vowels do not undergo lengthening for word stress or shortening for increased speech rate, indicating that temporal properties might interact with phonemic identity. We test the ULH by comparing the effect of the boundary on acoustic and kinematic measures for tense and lax vowels and several coda consonants. We further examine if the boundary effect decreases with distance from the boundary. Ten native speakers of German were recorded by means of electromagnetic articulography (EMA) while reading sentences that contained six minimal pairs varying in vowel tenseness and boundary type. In line with the ULH, the results show that the acoustic durations of lax vowels are lengthened phrase-finally, similarly to tense vowels. We find that acoustic lengthening is stronger the closer the segments are to the boundary. Articulatory parameters of the closing movements toward the post-vocalic consonants are affected by both phrasal position and identity of the preceding vowel. The results are discussed with regard to the interaction between prosodic structure and vowel tenseness.

Prosodic Phrasing and Syllable Prominence in Spoken Prose. A Validated Coding Manual

Current systems for predicting prosodic prominence and boundaries in texts focus on syntax/semantic-based automatic decoding of sentences that need to be annotated syntactically (Atterer & Klein 2002; Windmann et al. 2011). However, to date, there is no phonetically validated replicable system for manually coding prosodic boundaries and syllable prominence in longer sentences or texts. Based on work in the fields of metrical phonology (Liberman & Prince 1977), phrase formation (Hayes 1989) and existing pause coding systems (Gee and Grosjean 1983), we developed a manual for coding prosodic boundaries (with 6 degrees of juncture) and syllable prominence (8 degrees). Three independent annotators applied the coding system to the beginning pages of four German novels and to four short stories (20 058 syllables, Fleiss kappa .82). For the phonetic validation, eight professional speakers read the excerpts of the novels aloud. We annotated the speech signal automatically with MAUS (Schiel 1999). Using PRAAT (Boersma & Weenink 2019), we extracted pitch, duration, and intensity for each syllable, as well as several phonetic parameters for pauses, and compared all measures obtained to the theoretically predicted levels of syllable prominence and prosodic boundary strength. The validation with the speech signal shows that our annotation system reliably predicts syllable prominence and prosodic boundaries. Since our annotation works with plain text, there are many potential applications of the coding system, covering research on prose rhythm, synthetic speech and (psycho)linguistic research on prosody.

Prosodic boundary incongruences in oral reading

Background: Characteristics of oral readings are well studied in school-aged children and teenagers, but not in educated adults. Objectives: Assess the prevalence of prosodic boundary incongruences in oral readings of adult, native, educated, Brazilian Portuguese speakers and analyze their correlations with specific linguist features. Design, settings, and participants: We studied an online video corpus of political speeches delivered by house members of the Brazilian parliament between 2017 and 2018, and their respective written texts. Measurements: We assessed a) prosodic boundary incongruences between oral readings and written texts, b) actor prototypicality of the subjects, c) thematic continuity of the sentences, and d) a variable called 'sufficiency', related to the concept of argumenthood, assorting each word according to its need for complementary words. The inter-rater reliability of the author's perceptions of incongruences underwent Cohen's Kappa test. Results: In 5 hours of oral readings, we found a median of 1.4 prosodic boundary incongruences per minute (interquartile range: 0.766 - 2.212). 80% of the incongruences were insertions of non-terminal or terminal boundaries. Prosodic boundary incongruency correlated positively with a) thematic continuity of the incongruent sentences (p-value = 0.0006345), b) the concept of 'sufficiency' (p-value < 2.2e-16); and correlated negatively with c) first-person subjects (p-value = 0.0002584). Limitations: The assessment of the variables was subjective, and we did not control sentences for their lengths when analyzing variables 'b' and 'c'. Conclusions: Prosodic boundary incongruences were relatively common in our corpus. We introduced some hypotheses to explain the results.

Syllabic organization and phonetic indices in German stop-lateral clusters

Using articulatory data from five German speakers, we study how segmental sequences under different syllabic organizations respond to perturbations of phonetic parameters in the segments that compose them. Target words contained stop-lateral clusters /bl, gl, kl, pl/ in a word-initial and a cross-word context and were embedded in carrier phrases with different prosodic boundary strengths, i.e., no phrase boundary versus an utterance phrase boundary preceded the target word in the case of word-initial clusters or separated the consonants in the case of cross-word clusters. For word-initial cluster onsets, we find that increasing the lag between two consonants and C1 stop duration leads to earlier vowel initiation and reduced local timing stability across CV and CCV. Furthermore, as the inter-consonantal lag increases, C2 lateral duration decreases. In contrast, for cross-word clusters, increasing the lag between two consonants does not lead to earlier vowel initiation across CV and C#CV and robust local timing stability is maintained across CV and C#CV. Overall, the findings indicate that the effect of phonetic perturbations on the coordination patterns depends on the syllabic organization superimposed on these clusters.

constituents introduced by theming markers in French in the face of anteposed spatio-temporal complements

This paper discusses the prosodic properties of sentence-initial spatio-temporal adverbials and of PPs introduced by so-called 'thematic markers' (TMCs), such as en ce qui concerne ('as for') or du point de vue de ('with regard to'). Their function is to indicate the aboutness-topic (a.o. Reinhart 1981, Gundel 1989, Lambrecht 1994) (1) or the topic Chinese style (Chafe 1976) (2). (1) Concernant le programme, il doit différer selon les universités et les profs. (2) Mais quand on peut il faut impérativement regarder BBC News. En ce moment, au niveau de l'info, ils sont vraiment au top. (YCCQA, De Smet 2009) Mertens (2008) hypothesizes that in certain syntactic constructions such as left dislocations, (pseudo-)clefts and certain adjuncts, the articulation between the left detached element (the dislocated element, the focus of the cleft, the adjunct) and the main clause is followed by a major prosodic boundary, i.e. they end on a relative high pitch level. It appears from our corpus that most TMCs end on such a major prosodic boundary (73%). As for sentence-initial spatio-temporal PPs, only 41% end on a major prosodic boundary. There are two important differences between TMCs and sentence-initial spatio-temporal PPs which explain that a strong prosodic boundary at the end of a TMC is more frequent than at the end of sentence-initial spatio-temporal adverbials. Semantically, sentence-initial spatio-temporal adverbials always limit the application range of the main clause, but not all TMCs affect the truth values of the proposition. Some can be omitted without changing the signification of the clause. On the syntactic level, sentence-initial spatio-temporal adverbials can always appear in the scope of a cleft or can be moved towards the end of the utterance without the proposition becomes ungrammatical. TMCs which affect the truth values of the proposition can also appear in the scope of the cleft or can be moved to the end of the proposition. TMCs which do not affect the truth values of the proposition do not allow these syntactic tests. Possibility of clefting, movement and specification of the main clause are used as tests (a.o. Melis 1983, Blanche-Benveniste et al. 1990) to show whether a constituent is linked to the verb phrase. This paper shows that sentence-initial spatial-temporal PPs are linked to the verb phrase, but that this is not the case for all TMCs. These syntactic and semantic observations explain the high frequency of the strong prosodic boundary at the end of a TMC.

The Role of Segmental Information in Syntactic Processing Through the Syntax–Prosody Interface

In two experiments, it was investigated whether potentially contrastive segmental information in the form of an epenthetic glottal stop in Maltese can influence syntactic parsing decisions. The glottal stop in Maltese serves a dual function as a phoneme used for lexical contrast and a non-contrastive phone that may mark a prosodic juncture. In both experiments, participants perceived a larger prosodic boundary before the word u (Engl. “and”) if the u was produced with an epenthetic glottal stop, showing the use of prosodically conditioned segmental information in syntactic parsing. Furthermore, listeners were generally unaware of the existence of the epenthetic glottal stop even though a glottal stop is used as a phoneme represented as a grapheme “q.” They also perceived a larger prosodic juncture when the preceding syllable was lengthened before the word u (“and”). These findings were consistent regardless of whether the glottal stop reinforced a late-closure decision (Experiment 1) or an early-closure decision (Experiment 2). The results indicate that both segmental and suprasegmental information influences syntactic parsing decisions, demonstrating that the syntax–prosody interface is reflected along both the segmental and suprasegmental (duration) dimensions, which are mediated by the phonetics–prosody interface.

Intonational Structure Influences Perception of Contrastive Vowel Length: The Case of Phrase-Final Lengthening in Tokyo Japanese

Recent research has proposed that listeners use prosodic information to guide their processing of phonemic contrasts. Given that prosodic organization of the speech signal systematically modulates durational patterns (e.g., accentual lengthening and phrase-final (PF) lengthening), listeners’ perception of durational contrasts has been argued to be influenced by prosodic factors. For example, given that sounds are generally lengthened preceding a prosodic boundary, listeners may adjust their perception of durational cues accordingly, effectively compensating for prosodically-driven temporal patterns. In the present study we present two experiments designed to test the importance of pitch-based cues to prosodic structure for listeners’ perception of contrastive vowel length (CVL) in Tokyo Japanese along these lines. We tested if, when a target sound is cued as being PF, listeners compensatorily adjust categorization of vowel duration, in accordance with PF lengthening. Both experiments were a two-alternative forced choice task in which listeners categorized a vowel duration continuum as a phonemically short or long vowel. We manipulated only pitch surrounding the target sound in a carrier phrase to cue it as intonational phrase final, or accentual phrase medial. In Experiment 1 we tested perception of an accented target word, and in Experiment 2 we tested perception of an unaccented target word. In both experiments, we found that contextual changes in pitch influenced listeners’ perception of CVL, in accordance with their function as signaling intonational structure. Results therefore suggest that listeners use tonal information to compute prosodic structure and bring this to bear on their perception of durational contrasts in speech.

Modelling automatic detection of prosodic boundaries for brazilian portuguese spontaneous speech

Speech is segmented into intonational units marked by prosodic boundaries. This segmentation is claimed to have important consequences on syntax, information structure and cognition. This work aims both to investigate the phonetic-acoustic parameters that guide the production and perception of prosodic boundaries, and to develop models for automatic detection of prosodic boundaries in male monological spontaneous speech of Brazilian Portuguese. Two samples were segmented into intonational units by two groups of trained annotators. The boundaries perceived by the annotators were tagged as either terminal or non-terminal. A script was used to extract 111 phonetic-acoustic parameters along speech signal in a right and left windows around the boundary of each phonological word. The extracted parameters comprise measures of (1) Speech rate and rhythm; (2) Standardized segment duration; (3) Fundamental frequency; (4) Intensity; (5) Silent pause. The script considers as prosodic boundary positions at which at least 50% of the annotators indicated a boundary of the same type. A training of models composed by the parameters extracted by the script was developed; these models, were then improved heuristically. The models were developed from the two samples and from the whole data, both using non-balanced and balanced data. Linear Discriminant Analysis algorithm was adopted to produce the models. The models for terminal boundaries show a much higher performance than those for non-terminal ones. In this paper we: (i) show the methodological procedures; (ii) analyze the different models; (iii) discuss some strategies that could lead to an improvement of our results.