The Phonetics of Prosody

Prosody is an umbrella term used to cover a variety of interconnected and interacting phenomena, namely stress, rhythm, phrasing, and intonation. The phonetic expression of prosody relies on a number of parameters, including duration, amplitude, and fundamental frequency (F0). The same parameters are also used to encode lexical contrasts (such as tone), as well as paralinguistic phenomena (such as anger, boredom, and excitement). Further, the exact function and organization of the phonetic parameters used for prosody differ across languages. These considerations make it imperative to distinguish the linguistic phenomena that make up prosody from their phonetic exponents, and similarly to distinguish between the linguistic and paralinguistic uses of the latter. A comprehensive understanding of prosody relies on the idea that speech is prosodically organized into phrasal constituents, the edges of which are phonetically marked in a number of ways, for example, by articulatory strengthening in the beginning and lengthening at the end. Phrases are also internally organized either by stress, that is around syllables that are more salient relative to others (as in English and Spanish), or by the repetition of a relatively stable tonal pattern over short phrases (as in Korean, Japanese, and French). Both types of organization give rise to rhythm, the perception of speech as consisting of groups of a similar and repetitive pattern. Tonal specification over phrases is also used for intonation purposes, that is, to mark phrasal boundaries, and express information structure and pragmatic meaning. Taken together, the components of prosody help with the organization and planning of speech, while prosodic cues are used by listeners during both language acquisition and speech processing. Importantly, prosody does not operate independently of segments; rather, it profoundly affects segment realization, making the incorporation of an understanding of prosody into experimental design essential for most phonetic research.

Word stress and sentence prosody in Greek

The present study concerns the prosodic structure of Greek as a function of word stress and focus as well as statement and yes/no question sentence type distinctions. It is argued that the word stress distinction has a local domain whereas focus, statement and question distinctions have a global domain. Word stress has a lengthening effect on all segmental constituents of the stressed syllable and especially on vowel in combination with an intensity increase whereas the tonal pattern is variable in accordance with the global context. The focus distinction has no lengthening effect locally and may show variable tonal patterns locally and globally depending on the global context. The statement and yes/no sentence type distinction has variable prosodic patterns locally and globally and shows multiple interactions with variable focus applications.

The effect of prosodic focus varies by phrasal tones: the case of South Kyungsang Korean

This study examines the production and perception of corrective focus in South Kyungsang Korean, using phone number strings. It shows that focus prosody varies greatly by tonal pattern (HHL, HLL, LHT, LHL) within phrases. Prosodic focus in High-initial phrases was clearly produced and accurately recognized, compared to that in Low-initial phrases. Additionally, the identification rate of HLL was higher than that of HHL, mainly because the focused initial H of the HHL contrasted with the second H within phrases, in terms of pitch. The results confirm that the encoding of prosodic focus is not uniform within a language; rather, focus prosody within a language can vary depending on the tonal pattern of an utterance.

INVENTORY AND ASSESSMENT OF CORIANDER CROP IN THE STATE OF RAJASTHAN USING MULTITEMPORAL REMOTE SENSING DATA

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> The present study aims to develop the methodology for inventory and assessment of coriander crop in Rajasthan using remote sensing technique. Sentinel-2A optical data having a spatial resolution of 10&amp;thinsp;m, from January&amp;ndash;March, 2017 were considered for this study keeping in mind the crop calendar. It was found that coriander at its flowering stage gives a distinct light pink colour which helps it to differentiate from other crops. However it is difficult to separate other stages of coriander (early vegetative, mature stage) owing to its similarity in tonal pattern with mustard. The overall accuracy of single date image was found to be 63.29% and Kappa (K^) Coefficient as 0.5532. With the inclusion of multiple dates accuracy increased to 91.14% and Kappa (K^) Coefficient to 0.7436. This was because increase in information increases the possibility to separate crops from each other. This study demonstrates the feasibility of multi-temporal satellite data for accurate coriander crop mapping area estimation in multi-crop scenario with reasonable accuracy at the Block/district level and State level.</p>

Dubbing attitudes through tonal patterns: when tones speak louder than words

This article explores the conveyance of attitudinal content through intonation in dubbed dialogue and presents the findings from an empirical corpus-based analysis. Research-wise, intonation is hitherto an understudied topic in Audiovisual Translation and has generally taken a back seat in dubbing literature. However, its communicative value and attitudinal function in oral discourse cannot be overlooked when interpreting and producing dubbed speech. The possibility of associating a particular tonal pattern with specific attitudes has enabled the comparison between a number of English original and Spanish dubbed intonation phrases via a speech analysis software. The results obtained provide empirical data on the dubbing of the attitudinal content under analysis and account for the main trends that could negatively affect both the quality of the final outcome and the way the dubbed text is received by the target audience.

Tone assignment and grammatical tone in Anal (Tibeto-Burman)

Complex phenomena of grammatical tone, well-described for many African languages, are increasingly attested also in the Tibeto-Burman family. This paper describes the tone assignment rule and two cases of tonal expression of grammatical categories in the Tibeto-Burman language Anal. The typologically unusual rule involves tone spreading, tonal polarity on a non-edge constituent and additional spreading, resulting in constant tonal patterns across grammatical suffixes. In two different cases the combination of the tonal pattern assigned by this rule with peculiar morpho-tonological processes results in a marking of a grammatical category (future and 1sg-person) by grammatical tone, by vowel-length, or only by the overall tonal pattern of the verbal form. Both cases are related to the omission of an explicit marking of the category, although the outcome cannot be explained only by the concept of a floating tone.

Cortical Auditory-Evoked Potential and Behavioral Evidence for Differences in Auditory Processing between Good and Poor Readers

Background: The relationship between auditory processing (AP) and reading is thought to be significant; however our understanding of this relationship is somewhat limited. Previous studies have investigated the relation between certain electrophysiological and behavioral measures of AP and reading abilities in children. This study attempts to further understand that relation. Purpose: Differences in AP between good and poor readers were investigated using electrophysiological and behavioral measures. Study Sample: Thirty-two children (15 female) aged 9–11 yr were placed in either a good reader group or poor reader group, based on the scores of a nationally normed reading test in New Zealand. Research Design: Children were initially tested using an automated behavioral measuring system that runs through a tablet computer known as “Feather Squadron.” Following the administration of Feather Squadron, cortical auditory-evoked potentials (CAEPs) were recorded using a speech stimulus (/m/) with the HEARLab® Cortical Auditory Evoked Potential Analyzer. Data Collection and Analysis: The children were evaluated on eight subsections of the Feather Squadron, and CAEP waveform peaks were visually identified and averaged. Separate Kruskal–Wallis analyses were performed for the behavioral and electrophysiological variables, with group (good versus poor readers) serving as the between-group independent variable and scores from the Feather Squadron AP tasks as well as CAEP latencies and amplitudes as dependent variables. After the children’s AP status was determined, the entire group was further divided into three groups: typically developing, auditory processing disorder + reading difficulty (APD + RD), and RDs only. Statistical analyses were repeated for these subgroups. Results: Poorer readers showed significantly worse scores than the good readers for the Tonal Pattern 1, Tonal Pattern 2, and Word Double Dichotic Right tasks. CAEP differences observed across groups indicated comorbid effects of RD and AP difficulties. N2 amplitude was significantly smaller for the poor readers. Conclusions: The current study found altered AP in poor readers using behavioral Feather Squadron measures and speech-evoked cortical potentials. These results provide further evidence that intact central auditory function is fundamental for reading development.