Perceptual shift of accent in English

Abstract

It has been found that the perception of an accentual high tone (H) in Japanese is determined by both the F0 peak location and the F0 drop rate thereafter. The actual F0 peak need not occur on the accented syllable: If the peak is approximately within the first half of the postaccent syllable, and the drop rate is greater than a certain value, the H will be associated with the accented syllable [Y. Hasegawa and K. Hata, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Suppl. 1 83, S29 (1988); K. Hata and Y. Hasegawa, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Suppl. 1 84, S156 (1988)]. The preliminary experiment indicates that this perceptual accent shift is also observable in English; therefore, the effect must be taken into consideration in synthesizing English utterances. The present study investigates the case where the intonational H occurs on the utterance‐final syllable, e.g., “This is my nét.” In such a case, due to the exaggerated F0 lowering at utterance end, the drop rate after the peak may be so great that the perceptual shift can occur, i.e., the utterance may be perceived as “This is mý net.” Listening to synthesized utterances with varying drop rate on the final syllable, the subjects judged whether each utterance is more appropriate to responding to “What is it?” (inducing the accent on “net”) or “Is it her net?” (inducing the accent on “my”). The approximate value at which the shift occurs will be reported.