Strategies for the timing of the fundamental frequency contour

Abstract

The acoustic manifestation of the prosodic features are heavily influenced by the segmental composition of the utterances. In investigations about the fundamental frequency contour utterances built of only sonorants are often used and thereby the influence of constrictions of the vocal tract is avoided or at least diminished. In order to arrive at a detailed model of the fundamental frequency it is necessary to exactly know what is happening in different segmental environments. In the present study we are examining the effects which voiceless consonants have upon the fundamental frequency contour. Three different hypotheses are considered: the truncation, the timing adjustment and the rate adjustment hypothesis. The results show that the truncation hypothesis seems to be of limited validity at least from a detailed description of the fundamental frequency contour.