Acoustic Analysis of Tones in Contemporary Standard Slovene

It is generally accepted amongst Taiwanese scholars that syllables in the Taiwanese language take on one of seven lexical tones, and these seven tones are frequently cited in the major Taiwanese dictionaries. Five tones are known to occur on sonorant-final syllables and the remaining two on non-sonorant final syllables. This study employs a set of perception experiments to demonstrate that the class of non-sonorant final syllables are undistinguishable from the class of sonorant-final syllables when cued on fundamental frequency. Subjects are only able to separate the two classes when the rate of intensity decay is significantly different. Sonorant final syllables have a much slower rate of intensity decay than non-sonorant final syllables. These results suggest that the Taiwanese language consists of five distinct lexical tones and that the Taiwanese syllables aggregate suprasegmental attributes that take on one of seven distinct states. Each state is determined from a combination of f0 and intensity information. Tone sandhi effects can be explained as suprasemental state transitions. The findings confirm that there exist only five lexical tones in the Taiwanese language, echoing the phonemic view that tones with non-sonorant final syllables are allophonic tones of tones with sonorant-final syllables.

As a representative of southwestern Mandarin, the Chengdu dialect has its own distinctive pitch features in phonology of tone and intonation. Research on the pronunciation and lexical tone of the Chengdu dialect has a long history with a certain amount of theoretical results. However, research on intonation of Chengdu dialect is still rare. The writer provides an acoustic analysis of research into intonational pitch features of interrogative and declarative sentences of Chengdu dialect, discussing the F0 contour at the final syllable (character) of each sentence to find out if the statement or question mood is carried by the edge tone as well as the pitch perturbation between lexical tone and intonation on it. The results of this acoustic analysis show that there exist statement and question mood of Chengdu dialect carried by the final syllable within an intonational phrase as well as the perturbation on the final syllable (character) by the coexistence of its lexical tone and intonation.

Vibrotactile stimulation for the adventitiously deaf: an alternative to cochlear implantation.

An acoustical study of speech production was conducted to determine the manner in which the location of linguistic focus influences intonational attributes of duration and fundamental voice frequency (F0) in matched statements and questions. Speakers orally read sentences that were preceded by aurally presented stimuli designed to elicit either no focus or focus on the first or last noun phrase of the target sentences. Computer-aided acoustical analysis of word durations showed a localized, large magnitude increase in the duration of the focused word for both statements and questions. Analysis of F0 revealed a more complex pattern of results, with the shape of the F0 topline dependent on sentence type and focus location. For sentences with neutral or sentence-final focus, the difference in the F0 topline between questions and statements was evident only on the last key word, where the F0 peak of questions was considerably higher than that of statements. For sentences with focus on the first key word, there was no difference in peak F0 on the focused item itself, but the F0 toplines of questions and statements diverged quite dramatically following the initial word. The statement contour dropped to a low F0 value for the remainder of the sentence, whereas the question remained quite high in F0 for all subsequent words. In addition, the F0 contour on the focused word was rising in questions and falling in statements, regardless of focus location. The results provide a basis for work on the perception of linguistic focus.

Emotional states can be characterised by specific acoustic parameters. Fundamental frequency (F0) reflects biomechanical characteristics of vocal folds and is sensitive to affective components. Vocally expressed negative emotions are accompanied by increased muscular activation, while positive and neutral emotions result in fewer physiological changes. The present study aimed to research (1) whether the length of linguistic unit impacts the change of F0; (2) whether F0 differs in words, phrases, and continuous speech produced in neutral, happy, and angry prosody. Methods: Ten professional actors (5 males, 5 females) recorded nine voice samples (4 words, 4 phrases, 1 paragraph) in neutral, happy, and angry intonations. Each linguistic unit was recorded three times, resulting in a data pool of 810 samples. Six experts assessed the affective component of each actor’s performance to obtain 270 highest-ranked samples. Selected recordings were analysed using the software PRAAT v. 6.1.31. and script Vocal fundamental frequency, v. 02.04 (Phonanium, 2019). Results: In females, there were no statistically significant differences in speaking F0 between different linguistic units within a single prosody type. In males, mean F0 significantly increased with the increasing complexity of the linguistic unit in neutral, but not affective conditions. Overall, the highest speaking F0 was observed in happy prosody for females and in angry prosody for males. Both genders showed significant differences in mean F0 between neutral and affective prosody in words and phrases. A statistically significant difference in F0 between angry and happy intonation was observed in phrases in males and in text in females. Conclusion: The results showed that affective prosody did not impact mean F0 between linguistic units of different complexity. However, emotional intonation increased speaking F0. The differences in F0 between neutral and affective prosody were observed in all components of linguistic hierarchy, from single words to continuous speech. Since voice is used in daily communication, recognizing the role of emotions in vocal output can improve understanding of functional voice disorders.

Tonal information is essential to early word learning in tone languages. Although numerous studies have investigated the intonational and segmental properties of infant-directed speech (IDS), only a few studies have explored the properties of lexical tones in IDS. These studies mostly focused on the first year of life; thus little is known about how lexical tones in IDS change as children’s vocabulary acquisition accelerates in the second year (Goldfield and Reznick, 1990; Bloom, 2001). The present study examines whether Mandarin Chinese mothers hyperarticulate lexical tones in IDS addressing 18- and 24-month-old children—at which age children are learning words at a rapid speed—vs. adult-directed speech (ADS). Thirty-nine Mandarin Chinese–speaking mothers were tested in a semi-spontaneous picture-book-reading task, in which they told the same story to their child (IDS condition) and to an adult (ADS condition). Results for the F0 measurements (minimum F0, maximum F0, and F0 range) of tone in the speech data revealed a continuum of differences among IDS addressing 18-month-olds, IDS addressing 24-month-olds, and ADS. Lexical tones in IDS addressing 18-month-old children had a higher minimum F0, higher maximum F0, and larger pitch range than lexical tones in ADS. Lexical tones in IDS addressing 24-month-old children showed more similarity to ADS tones with respect to pitch height: there were no differences in minimum F0 and maximum F0 between ADS and IDS. However, F0 range was still larger. These results suggest that lexical tones are generally hyperarticulated in Mandarin Chinese IDS addressing 18- and 24- month-old children despite the change in pitch level over time. Mandarin Chinese mothers hyperarticulate lexical tones in IDS when talking to toddlers and potentially facilitate tone acquisition and word learning.

A fundamental feature of human speech is variation, including the manner of phonation, as exemplified in the case of whispered speech. In this study, we employed whispered speech to examine an unresolved issue about congenital amusia, a neurodevelopmental disorder of musical pitch processing, which also affects speech pitch processing such as lexical tone and intonation perception. The controversy concerns whether amusia is a pitch-processing disorder or can affect speech processing beyond pitch. We examined lexical tone and intonation recognition in 19 Mandarin-speaking amusics and 19 matched controls in phonated and whispered speech, where fundamental frequency (f o) information is either present or absent. The results revealed that the performance of congenital amusics was inferior to that of controls in lexical tone identification in both phonated and whispered speech. These impairments were also detected in identifying intonation (statements/questions) in phonated and whispered modes. Across the experiments, regression models revealed that f o and non-f o (duration, intensity, and formant frequency) acoustic cues predicted tone and intonation recognition in phonated speech, whereas non-f o cues predicted tone and intonation recognition in whispered speech. There were significant differences between amusics and controls in the use of both f o and non-f o cues. The results provided the first evidence that the impairments of amusics in lexical tone and intonation identification prevail into whispered speech and support the hypothesis that the deficits of amusia extend beyond pitch processing. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.19302275.

Lexical-tone languages use fundamental frequency (F0) to convey word-meaning. Nearly half of all languages use lexical tone [Maddieson (2008)], yet those systems are under-studied. To increase our understanding of speech-sound inventory organization, I extend to tone-systems a model of vowel-system organization, the theory of adaptive dispersion (TAD) [Liljencrants and Lindblom (1972)]. This is a cross-language investigation of whether and how tone-inventory size affects acoustic tone-space size. Five languages with different-sized tone-inventories were compared: Cantonese (six tones), Thai (five tones), Mandarin (four tones), Yoruba (three tones), and Igbo (two tones). Six native speakers (three female) of each language produced 18 CV syllables in isolation, with each of his/her language’s tones, six times. Tonal F0 (semitones) was measured at three equidistant points across the vowel. Each language’s tone-space was defined in two ways: (1) the F0 difference between its highest and lowest tones and (2) the configuration of tones in a 2-D space defined by onset F0 x offglide F0. Following the TAD, I predicted that languages with larger tone-inventories would have larger tone-spaces; this was not supported by (1). However, the dispersion of tones in (2) supports the TAD hypothesis that sound-categories will be well-dispersed across the space and highly contrastive.

The difference in fundamental frequency (F0) between vowels is a segregation cue for identifying concurrent vowels. Younger listeners with normal hearing (YNH) showed that the percent identification score of both vowels improved with increasing F0 difference and asymptoted at higher F0 difference. The current study developed a deep-neural-network model consisting of a time-delay neural network and multitask learning (TDNN-MTL) to predict the concurrent vowel scores. The input to the TDNN-MTL were temporal responses of concurrent vowels obtained using the auditory-nerve model. The TDNN-MTL was trained at a 3-Hz F0 difference until the score (80%) became closer to the YNH score (85%). The TDNN-MTL learned the formant coding and aided in the segregation of concurrent vowels into dominant and recessive vowels. The total weighted loss was tailored to mimic the dominant-recessive relationship of the YNH scores. The TDNN-MTL was tested against the other five F0 differences. The TDNN-MTL model scores of both vowels were successful in predicting the YNH scores. The chi-square tests revealed that the TDNN-MTL model scores correlated well with the YNH scores compared with other F0-segregation and multi-layer perceptron models. The TDNN-MTL also correctly predicted the one vowel identification scores and F0 benefit. These findings suggest that the trained TDNN-MTL accurately predicts the formant coding of the concurrent vowels across F0 differences, which aided in capturing the YNH scores. The TDNN-MTL can be extended to validate the behavioral studies on concurrent vowels obtained across acoustic (e.g., vowel duration and level) and auditory changes (e.g., aging and hearing loss).

ABSTRACTCantonese is a tone language, in which the variation of the fundamental frequency contour of a syllable can change meaning. There are six different lexical tones in Cantonese. While research with Western languages has shown an association between stuttering and syllabic stress, nothing is known about whether stuttering in Cantonese speakers is associated with one or more of the six lexical tones. Such an association has been reported in conversational speech in Mandarin, which is also a tone language, but which varies markedly from Cantonese. Twenty-four native Cantonese-speaking adults who stutter participated in this study, ranging in age from 18–33 years. There were 18 men and 6 women. Participants read aloud 13 Cantonese syllables, each of which was produced with six contrastive lexical tones. All 78 syllables were embedded in the same carrier sentence, to reduce the influence of suprasegmental or linguistic stress, and were presented in random order. No significant differences were found for stuttering moments across the six lexical tones. It is suggested that this is because lexical tones, at least in Cantonese, do not place the task demands on the speech motor system that typify varying syllabic stress in Western languages: variations not only in fundamental frequency, but also in duration and intensity. The findings of this study suggest that treatments for adults who stutter in Western languages, such as speech restructuring, can be used with Cantonese speakers without undue attention to lexical tone.

Sequential stream segregation of voiced and unvoiced speech sounds based on fundamental frequency

In tone languages there are potential conflicts in the perception of lexical tone and intonation, as both depend mainly on the differences in fundamental frequency (F0) patterns. The present study investigated the acoustic cues associated with the perception of sentences as questions or statements in Cantonese, as a function of the lexical tone in sentence final position. Cantonese listeners performed intonation identification tasks involving complete sentences, isolated final syllables, and sentences without the final syllable (carriers). Sensitivity (d' scores) were similar for complete sentences and final syllables but were significantly lower for carriers. Sensitivity was also affected by tone identity. These findings show that the perception of questions and statements relies primarily on the F0 characteristics of the final syllables (local F0 cues). A measure of response bias (c) provided evidence for a general bias toward the perception of statements. Logistic regression analyses showed that utterances were accurately classified as questions or statements by using average F0 and F0 interval. Average F0 of carriers (global F0 cue) was also found to be a reliable secondary cue. These findings suggest that the use of F0 cues for the perception of intonation question in tonal languages is likely to be language-specific.

Acoustic characteristics of three-year-olds' correct and incorrect monosyllabic Mandarin lexical tone productions

Differences in formant frequencies and fundamental frequencies (F0) are important cues for segregating and identifying two simultaneous vowels. This study assessed age- and hearing-loss-related changes in the use of these cues for recognition of one or both vowels in a pair and determined differences related to vowel identity and specific vowel pairings. Younger adults with normal hearing, older adults with normal hearing, and older adults with hearing loss listened to different-vowel and identical-vowel pairs that varied in F0 differences. Identification of both vowels as a function of F0 difference revealed that increased age affects the use of F0 and formant difference cues for different-vowel pairs. Hearing loss further reduced the use of these cues, which was not attributable to lower vowel sensation levels. High scores for one vowel in the pair and no effect of F0 differences suggested that F0 cues are important only for identifying both vowels. In contrast to mean scores, widely varying differences in effects of F0 cues, age, and hearing loss were observed for particular vowels and vowel pairings. These variations in identification of vowel pairs were not explained by acoustical models based on the location and level of formants within the two vowels.

Large numbers of children around the world are learning tone languages, but few studies have examined the acoustic properties of children's early tone productions. Even more scarce are acquisition studies on tone sandhi, a tone change phenomenon which alters the surface realization of lexical tones. Two studies using perceptual coding report the emergence of lexical tone and tone sandhi at around 2 years (Li and Thompson, 1977; Hua and Dodd, 2000). However, the only acoustic study available shows that 3-year-olds are not yet adult-like in their lexical tone productions (Wong, 2012). This raises questions about when children's productions become acoustically adult-like and how their tone productions differ from those of adults. These questions were addressed in the current study which compared Mandarin-speaking pre-schoolers' (3–5-year-olds) tone productions to that of adults. A picture naming task was used with disyllabic real words familiar to pre-schoolers. Overall children produced appropriate tone contours for all tones, i.e., level for tone 1, rising for tones 2, 3 and full sandhi, falling for tone 4 and half sandhi. However, children's productions were not adult-like for tones 3, 4, and the sandhi forms, in terms of coordinating pitch range, slope and curvature, with little evidence of development across ages. These results suggest a protracted process in achieving adult-like acoustic realization of both lexical and sandhi tones.