Autosegmental-metrical Framework Research Articles

Second language acquisition of Spanish prosody by Chinese speakers: Nuclear contours and pitch characteristics

Despite the increasing number of studies in L2 prosody, little research has been carried out on the Chinese-Spanish language pair. This article sets out to examine the L2 acquisition of nuclear contours and pitch implementation details of Spanish spoken by Chinese speakers. To this end, 555 utterances (produced by 37 informants) were analyzed within an autosegmental-metrical framework, and pitch values were evaluated using long-term distributional (LTD) and pitch dynamism quotient (PDQ) measures. The results suggest a hierarchy of difficulties in acquiring the prosodic features of different sentence types. The most salient intonational error made by the Chinese learners was the tendency to replace low nuclear accents with high/rising tones. Furthermore, the higher pitch level, narrower span, and lower F0 variance found for Chinese speakers lend support to previous hypotheses which proposed a general pitch compression pattern for L2 speech. Nevertheless, with increasing proficiency in Spanish, learners appear to develop more target-like intonation contours and pitch profiles. Finally, gender and stress effects as well as other interactions prove that L2 prosody learning is more complex than previously stated, and is influenced not only by the L1 system and oral competence but is also correlated with some psychological and sociocultural factors.

The role of intonation in Construction Grammar: On prosodic constructions

In constructionist approaches, constructions are defined as pairings of phonological, morphological and syntactic form, and semantic, pragmatic or discursive meaning. However, in practice very few constructional analyses deal specifically with the intonational properties of constructions. Moreover, constructional approaches are not clear about the ontological status of intonation in a constructional model of language. Combining insights from Construction Grammar and Intonational Studies, specifically the Autosegmental Metrical framework of intonational phonology and the Tones and Breaks Indices (ToBI) transcription model, this paper discusses the role of prosody in a construction-based approach to language, through the analysis of the insubordinate conditional construction (ICC) in Spanish. Building on the analysis of the prosody of 90 tokens of the ICC uttered by 14 native speakers of Peninsular Spanish, we argue that the best way to account for the relationship between intonational patterns and (lexicogrammatical) constructions is to treat intonational patterns as constructions that pair a phonological form with a semantic-pragmatic meaning, which are then inherited by sentence-level constructions as long as their meanings are compatible.

An intonational model of Shanghai Wu: A pitch-accent analysis

This paper presents an intonational model of Shanghai Wu in the Autosegmental-Metrical framework. Shanghai’s peculiar phrasal tonal system, which spreads lexical tones over sandhi domains, is well-discussed in the literature; however, there is no account of the language's contrastive intonational elements and their phonetic realization. Grounded in phonetic data collected from 14 Shanghainese speakers born between 1945 and 1963, the paper analyzes the language as a pitch-accent system rather than a tonal one, with three distinctive accents: L* + H, H* + L, and L*. These pitch accents pair with one of two accentual phrase-like boundary tones, La and LHa with specific tonotactic requirements. Additionally, I will describe the prosodic hierarchy, as determined by the intonation, as having two levels above the accentual phrase, the intonational phrase (marked via initial pitch range expansion and one of three boundary tones: L%, %, and H%) as well as the major phrase. Together with a labelling system, this analysis allows for easy annotation of Shanghainese tonal events, similar to the ToBI-type models for languages such as Japanese and Serbo-Croatian.This paper presents an intonational model of Shanghai Wu in the Autosegmental-Metrical framework. Shanghai’s peculiar phrasal tonal system, which spreads lexical tones over sandhi domains, is well-discussed in the literature; however, there is no account of the language's contrastive intonational elements and their phonetic realization. Grounded in phonetic data collected from 14 Shanghainese speakers born between 1945 and 1963, the paper analyzes the language as a pitch-accent system rather than a tonal one, with three distinctive accents: L* + H, H* + L, and L*. These pitch accents pair with one of two accentual phrase-like boundary tones, La and LHa with specific tonotactic requirements. Additionally, I will describe the prosodic hierarchy, as determined by the intonation, as having two levels above the accentual phrase, the intonational phrase (marked via initial pitch range expansion and one of three boundary tones: L%, %, and H%) as well as the major phrase. Together with a labelling system, this an...

Review of Intonation in Romance, by Sónia Frota and Pilar Prieto (Eds.). Oxford: Oxford University Press

The edited volume, Intonation in Romance, comprises eleven chapters: nine content chapters summarise the results of detailed prosodic analysis of intonation patterns across varieties of a particular Romance language, and are framed by an introduction and conclusion by the editors. The languages treated include those whose intonation systems have received much attention (Catalan, French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish), alongside less-studied languages (Friulian, Occitan, Romanian and Sardinian). All chapters used the same methods of data collection and analysis: parallel data across languages was elicited with a common set of dialogue completion tasks; intonation patterns in the data are analysed on the basis of a shared implementation of the Tone and Break Indices (ToBI) model of prosodic annotation, within the Autosegmental-Metrical framework. These shared methods inform direct comparison of Romance intonation patterns and systems, within and across languages, to identify the scope and potential causes of variation, as well as avenues for future research.

Intonational phonology and politeness in L1 and L2 Spanish

AbstractThis study makes a foray into the politeness strategies used by English learners of Spanish by comparing a corpus of invitations and requests recorded by 14 adult English learners of beginner-level Spanish as part of their course assignment to the data recorded by 12 native speakers. The native speakers’ data was collected using discourse completion tests, which elicited offers and requests in scenarios controlled for social distance, power, and the cost of the request or offer. All the data was analysed pragmatically, by quantifying the occurrence of politeness strategies, and phonologically, by transcribing pitch accents and boundary tones in line with the guidelines of the Autosegmental Metrical framework. The results show that, depending on the situation, native speakers combine the use of different lexical and morpho-syntactic devices with the use of specific intonational patterns. Most learners at beginner level correctly use a limited range of morpho-syntactic politeness strategies appropriate to their level, and these are frequently reinforced with intonation. However, our data also show that beginner learners often transfer the intonational patterns of their first language.

The role of speaking styles in assessing intonation in foreign accent syndrome

Purpose. This paper evaluates the role of different speaking styles in defining intonation patterns in speakers with foreign accent syndrome. The methodological investigation aimed at establishing to what extent scripted and unscripted speech influence the phonological realization of intonation in disordered speech.Method. Four individuals with foreign accent syndrome and four gender-, age- and original dialect-matched control speakers were asked to perform a series of scripted and unscripted speech tasks including short sentences, a reading passage, a picture description and a monologue task. The speech data were analysed within the autosegmental-metrical framework of intonational analysis in relation to inventory, distribution, realization and functional use of intonational elements.Result. Findings revealed that the unscripted speaking styles provided a more comprehensive picture of the inventory and distribution of intonation contours, whereas differences in the functional use were more prominently reflected in the scripted data sets, in particular the short sentences.Conclusion. The findings highlight that the type of speaking style influences how intonation patterns are realized in disordered as well as healthy speech. A combination of scripted as well as unscripted data is, thus, required to obtain a comprehensive picture of the intonation abilities of a speaker with foreign accent syndrome.

The interaction of prosody and syntax in Samoan focus marking

This paper presents the first study of prosodic and syntactic focus marking in Samoan, an Austronesian VSO language. It is shown that while Samoan appears to use syntax to mark focus, focus marking in Samoan actually fits well within the generalisation that focus must be maximally prosodically prominent. Seven native speakers were recorded answering questions about pictures depicting simple events. The questions were designed to elicit agent or object focus, and question-under-discussion (QUD) focus or contrastive focus. Results showed different speakers had different focus-marking strategies. Two consistently used a cleft construction to front the focused constituent. Two speakers fronted focused agents, but not objects. The final three used basic verb-agent-object ordering in all focus conditions. Prosody was analysed within the Autosegmental Metrical framework. The initial phonological phrase was always the most prominent. Therefore, when the focus was fronted, it was maximally prominent, making Samoan a language with prosodically motivated syntactic movement, like Spanish and Hungarian. In the verb-agent-object sentences, the verb and agent were in the initial phrase. Speakers raised the accent on the object in object focus, and lowered it in agent focus; although they did not do this consistently. There was no prosodic marking of focus on the agent. This is interestingly opposite the asymmetry between focus marking on the subject and object in English and Romance languages, with the same prosodic motivation.

Analysing prosody and meaning in Spanish: implications for the teaching of English as a foreign language

The aim of this work is to identify the difficulties that Spanish learners of English may have when confronted with the L2 intonation. The different tone choices made by native speakers of Spanish in North Patagonia, Argentina, are analysed in the light of the Autosegmental-Metrical framework (LADD, 1996) and the Relevance Theory (SPERBER and WILSON, 1995, 2004). The findings are compared with the tone choices produced by native speakers of English. The main results indicate that the same procedural instruction is manifested in both languages by means of L* L% and H+L* L%. However, Spanish favours L* whereas English prefers H+L*. DOI: 10.28998/2317-9945.2013v2n52p207-226

Prosody and discourse structure in Buenos Aires Spanish

In previous work, we examined the role of some prosodic features in structuring spoken discourse. In this paper, we explore monologue in political discourse, and attempt to link these prosodic cues to the speaker’s argumentative goals. The prosodic analysis is carried out in the Autosegmental-Metrical framework applied to Buenos Aires Spanish. The pragmatic analysis follows Relevance Theory. Tonal configurations guide the hearers to those parts of the discourse the speaker wants the audience to consider highly relevant. DOI: 10.28998/2317-9945.2013v2n52p227-247

Spontaneous speech intonation in (European) Portuguese: an example of experimental analysis with a macrosyntactic view

Besides studies based on illocution criteria (Raso Mello, 2009), most studies on Portuguese intonation pertain mainly to read speech, and use for a large part either the autosegmental-metrical framework -- AM - (Frota al., 2007) or, for a small number, a phonosyntactic model (Martin, 1999, 2004). In papers pertaining to the last category, there is a clear assumption that the sentence prosodic structure is independent but associated to syntax. In this view, prosodic contours located on or around stressed syllables function as phonological markers of this prosodic structure. Experimental studies describe for example a high and rising melodic contour located on the first stressed syllable of a subject NP, and either a rising contour (on the stressed syllable) or a complex contour (falling on the stressed syllable and rising on the last syllable) of the last unit of a SN syntagm. Whereas this description is essentially compatible with those given in the AM framework, the validity of AM theory may be questionable if extended to non-prepared (spontaneous) speech. In such cases, a macrosyntactic approach proves to be an effective tool, as it envisions the sentence as a sequence of macrosegments, syntactically well formed in the classical sense, but whose relations of parataxis or dependency with each other are partially determined by the sentence prosodic structure. This paper presents a short example of analysis conducted in this framework, showing the interaction between macrosyntactic and prosodic structures, the latter operation (re)structuring the sequence of macrosegments organized (by definition) in a flat structure in the sentence.

Tonal Targets in Early Child English, Spanish, and Catalan

This study analyses the scaling and alignment of low and high intonational targets in the speech of 27 children - nine English-speaking, nine Catalan-speaking and nine Spanish-speaking - between the ages of two and six years. We compared the intonational patterns of words controlled for number of syllables and stress position in the child speech to the adult target speech provided by their mothers, and to a dataset of adult-directed speech recorded at a later stage for the purpose of measuring pitch height. A corpus of 624 utterances was elicited using a controlled naming task and analysed within the Autosegmental Metrical framework. Measuring the pitch height and pitch timing of nuclear pitch accents, we found that once the effects of syllable duration are accounted for, young children reach tonal targets with remarkable precision. Overall, the results indicate that the phonetic aspects of intonation are acquired from a very early age. Even the youngest children show adult-like alignment of the low target, although mastery of the high target increases with age. Young Spanish-speaking children, however, show a more precise attainment of pitch scaling and alignment of their (high) tonal targets than do Catalan and English children; where the ambient language lies within a general prosodic typology appears to influence the acquisition of tonal targets.

Intonation in neurogenic foreign accent syndrome

Foreign accent syndrome (FAS) is a motor speech disorder in which changes to segmental as well as suprasegmental aspects lead to the perception of a foreign accent in speech. This paper focuses on one suprasegmental aspect, namely that of intonation. It provides an in-depth analysis of the intonation system of four speakers with FAS with the aim of establishing the intonational changes that have taken place as well as their underlying origin. Using the autosegmental-metrical framework of intonational analysis, four different levels of intonation, i.e., inventory, distribution, realisation and function, were examined in short sentences. Results revealed that the speakers with FAS had the same structural inventory at their disposal as the control speakers, but that they differed from the latter in relation to the distribution, implementation and functional use of their inventory. The current results suggest that these intonational changes cannot be entirely attributed to an underlying intonation deficit but reflect secondary manifestations of physiological constraints affecting speech support systems and compensatory strategies. These findings have implications for the debate surrounding intonational deficits in FAS, advocating a reconsideration of current assumptions regarding the underlying nature of intonation impairment in FAS. Learning outcomes: The reader will be able to (1) explain the relevance of intonation in defining foreign accent syndrome; (2) describe the process of intonation analysis within the autosegmental-metrical (AM) framework; and (3) discuss the manifestation of intonation changes in FAS at the different levels of intonation and their potential underlying nature.

Why Prosody Matters: Surface Scope Bias in Russian Quantifier Scope

I present the results of a production experiment on the prosodic realization of doubly quantified sentences in Russian that tested the hypothesis (due to Kitagawa and Fodor 2003, Hirotani 2004) that native speakers (tacitly) impose surface scope-biasing prosody. If correct, the hypothesis could account for the rigid surface scope claims found in the literature. Target sentences were excised from contexts, evaluated for the degree of disambiguation and analized within the autosegmental-metrical framework (Pierrehumbert 1980). The results of our experiment support the main hypothesis, strongly suggesting that Russian prosody needs to be strictly controled for when eliciting quantifier scope judgements.

Is prosodic development correlated with grammatical and lexical development? Evidence from emerging intonation in Catalan and Spanish

This investigation focuses on the development of intonation patterns in four Catalan-speaking children and two Spanish-speaking children between 0 ; 11 and 2 ; 4. Pitch contours were prosodically analyzed within the Autosegmental Metrical framework in all meaningful utterances, for a total of 6558 utterances. The pragmatic meaning and communicative function were also assessed. Three main conclusions arise from the results. First, the study shows that the Autosegmental Metrical model can be successfully used to transcribe early intonation contours. Second, results reveal that children's emerging intonation is largely independent of grammatical development, and generally it develops well before the appearance of two-word combinations. As for the relationship between lexical and intonational development, the data show that the emergence of intonational grammar is related to the onset of speech and the presence of a small lexicon. Finally, we discuss the implications of these results for the biological hypothesis of intonational production.

An Autosegmental-Metrical Investigation of Intonation in People with Parkinson's Disease

This study investigates the intonation in the read speech of two males with hypokinetic dysarthria resulting from idiopathic Parkinson's disease and compares them with two age-matched male controls. The investigation was carried out within the autosegmental-metrical framework (AM), which analyzes intonational contours as a sequence of abstract, discrete pitch targets (high or low tones) and permits analysis on two levels: the intonational phonology and its phonetic realisation. Despite its potential for revealing patterns of disordered usage, the AM approach has seldom been deployed in the analysis of disordered speech, and has never been used to investigate the intonation patterns of people with Parkinson's disease.Results showed that there were no differences between the participants with parkinsonian dysarthria and the healthy controls in the inventory of pitch accents and boundary tones (i.e., the phonological elements of intonation). Both groups used the same range of pitch accent types and boundary tones. However, there were differences in the phonetic realization of them. In particular, the speakers with parkinsonian dysarthria on average produced shorter intermediate and intonational phrases, used fewer pitch accents per intonational phrase, and had a narrower pitch range. Furthermore, their boundary tones did not always coincide with syntactic boundaries.The finding of preserved categorical elements of intonation suggests that the abstract representations of intonation are unaffected in these participants with parkinsonian dysarthria. However, the findings of problems with the distribution and phonetic realization suggests that there may be a disruption in the instantiation of those abstract representations either at the initial planning level or at the level of phonetic implementation.

Tolowa Peak Pitch Alignment: Perspectives from an Autosegmental-Metrical Framework

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An acoustic phonetic analysis of intonational prominence in two Australian languages

The intonational typology of two Northern Australian languages, Dalabon and the Kundedjnjenghmi dialect of Bininj Gun-wok, suggests that these languages can be analyzed within the autosegmental-metrical framework of intonation as having two kinds of intonational events that serve to demarcate the boundaries of intonational phrases: pitch accents and boundary tones. Both languages have also previously been described as having lexical stress. In this study, the acoustic correlates of syllables associated with intonational pitch accents, were measured, namely, F0, duration, RMS amplitude and vowel quality, in one lengthy narrative text from each language. The duration of intonational phrase-final syllables was also measured. Results indicate that syllables associated with pitch accents are phonetically lengthened and have marginally higher RMS amplitude. However, there is little variation in vowel quality due to the presence of a pitch accent or intonational prominence. Final syllables are also lengthened at intonational phrase edges, indicating that duration is a cue to this level of prosodic constituency in these languages.

Pitch accent realization in English and German

“Intonation” languages have been claimed to exhibit systematic variation in tonal realization which affects the surface form of accents without affecting the inventory of phonological contrasts. Cross-linguistic experimental studies investigating such differences, however, are scarce. This paper shows that English and German differ in the realization of phrase-final rising and falling pitch accents when accents are associated with segmental material which offers successively less scope for voicing. English “compresses” rises and falls; both contours become steeper in order to complete the rise or fall in a shorter time span. German, on the other hand, truncates falling accents; falls do not become steeper, but simply end earlier. Rising accents, however, are compressed, just as in English. Within an autosegmental-metrical framework, the evidence may be interpreted as reflecting a case of two languages sharing a common inventory of phonological specifications but differing in the way these specifications are realized in F0.