A role of fundamental frequencies in the perception of emphasized words

Abstract

Many previous studies have shown the role of the fundamental frequency (F0) on focus structure in speech production. The current study examined the role of F0 on focus perception. Eleven subjects of Tokyo Japanese were asked to listen to 889 F0-manipulated sentences and to select the word that they thought the speaker emphasized. Each stimulus included a noun phrase such as ‘‘W1-no W2,’’ where both W1 and W2 are a noun with an accent on the first mora. The F0 contour of each stimulus was varied by changing values of F0 at the three points: the F0 minimum point (i.e., dip) in the noun phrase and the F0 maximum point (peak) in each word. The result showed that F0 functions as a phonetic cue for a listener to perceive the emphasis on the word. We found that the relative F0 differences between the two peaks largely determined the subject’s focus perception. Furthermore, logistic regression analysis suggests that the dip plays an important role. We will discuss the relationship between the dip and peaks for the focus perception.