Spectral correlates lexical prosody

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to derive a quantitative acoustic model of lexical-prosodic characteristics of stressed vowels by looking at several spectral properties associated with the articulatory mechanisms used in speech production. Native speakers of American English were asked to name disyllabic visualizable nouns. Words containing liquids or glides were not used in this study because of their effect on the spectra of adjacent vowels. Subjects uttered short phrases in which the target word was pitch accent half of the time and unaccented the other half. Results show that within the category of full vowels, unstressed and stressed vowels can be distinguished by syllable/vowel durations and spectral tilt. Spectral tilt (SpT) is an acoustic measure related to the degree of glottal spreading. Stressed full vowels had longer duration and less SpT. Distinction between unaccented and accented stressed vowels can be made by amplitude of voicing (AV), F0 (pitch), and intensity contour differences. Accented stressed vowels have higher pitch, and greater AV and intensity. These results suggest that there are acoustic correlates to lexical stress that can be used to determine the stressed syllable of a word, regardless of whether or not it is pitch accented. [Work supported by NIH T32-DC00038.]