Abstract
This paper describes the application of the analysis by synthesis paradigm to the melody of speech. Acomplete chain of processes is described from the acoustic analysis of fundamental frequency (f0), via thephonetic modelling of f0 using the Momel algorithm, to the surface phonological representation of thecurves using the INTSINT alphabet. Each step of the chain is designed as a reversible process which can beused to generate an acoustic output allowing an objective evaluation of the analysis. Finally, the currentimplementation of ProZed, a prosody editor for linguists, is described. It is argued that an explicit set ofmodelling tools like this will allow linguists to test different models of phonological structure which, it ishoped, will result in the availability of more and better data on a wide variety of languages.
Highlights
As a native speaker of English who has been living and working in France for the last 40 years, I often wonder what I could answer, if asked to summarise what I know today about the prosodic differences between the French and English languages, two languages with which I obviously know rather well
The search for an appropriate scale for measuring fundamental frequency has been one part of a systematic attempt, in particular by researchers from Holland (Hart, 't ), to develop a model of the way in which pitch is perceived. This was done by stylising raw fundamental frequency patterns as a sequence of straight lines, such that when the stylised frequency is used to resynthesise the utterance, the result is judged to be perceptually equivalent to the original intonation pattern
The idea, is that a raw intonation pattern is the interaction between two independent components: a macromelodic component determined by the accentuation and intonation of the utterance and a micromelodic component determined by the segmental phonemes
Summary
As a native speaker of English who has been living and working in France for the last 40 years, I often wonder what I could answer, if asked to summarise what I know today about the prosodic differences between the French and English languages, two languages with which I obviously know rather well. Scientists are confronted with the task of describing huge quantities of observable data If they can reduce the complexity of the description by showing that the observable complexity is determined by some simpler, more abstract principle, they have added to our knowledge of the data. Mendeleev showed that what might, at the time, have appeared to be an arbitrary list of elements was characterised by an underlying (invisible) structure, and that this structure accounted for many of the properties of the known elements in a systematic way. Mendeleev's discovery illustrates nicely the properties of science, which is supposed to be cumulative, explicit, predictive, and empirically testable. These are precisely the criteria which I believe we need to apply to linguistic knowledge. Much of what I have to say in this overview has already been published in various places but I try to give here an overall picture of the application of this approach and to provide answers to some of the questions which I have often been asked when I have given oral presentations of this material
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