Intonational Features Research Articles

Contacto lingüístico y transferencia prosódica bajo una perspectiva diacrónica: El caso del alguerés

Abstract The article focuses on some intonational features of three Romance languages spoken in northern Sardinia (Algherese Catalan, Logudorese Sardinian, and the Sardinian regional variety of Italian). The first part of the article shows, by means of both qualitative and quantitative analyses, that the above-mentioned languages share some intonational features that are not present in the dialects of Catalan and Italian spoken in the Iberian Peninsula and the Italian Peninsula, respectively. In the following sections the article puts forward a diachronic explanation for this intonational convergence, basing on the role of Sardinian as a substrate language for both Algherese Catalan and the regional Italian of Sardinia. The final part of the article proposes a generalization of the findings of the case-study and puts forward a diachronic model of prosodic transfer that includes the mechanisms of direct transfer, fusion, and accommodation.

PEDAGOGICAL CONDITIONS OF EFFECTIVE INTONATION SEMANTICS ACQUISITION AS A COMPONENT OF PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION OF FUTURE BACHELORS OF PEDAGOGICAL EDUCATION

This article reflects the basic pedagogical conditions ensuring effective mastering of intonation semantics by future bachelor of pedagogical education. The author emphasizes the need to create a special system, which will facilitate a more rapid and qualitative intonation semantics acquisition, as an important component of professional communication in a foreign language, and focuses the attention on the need to comply with the complex of pedagogical conditions presented in this paper. Mastering intonation semantics should deal with the solution of professionally significant problems in the sphere of foreign language education. While working on the research, the author determined the system of conditions to ensure the effectiveness of the process of intonation semantics acquisition, the main ones are as follows: involvement of students in the context of teaching activities; immersion students in professional environment; development of professional thinking of the future bachelors of pedagogical education; providing the problem the nature of educational activity; evaluated implementation of tasks; the formation of positive motivation of students to master the means of intonation semantics. The process of teaching should be based on the involvement of students in professionallyoriented communication that contributes to the development of professional thinking of the future bachelors of pedagogical education and requires professional teaching tasks. At the same time much importance is devoted to the semantic features of intonation, realized in professionally-oriented pedagogical speech.

The intonation of the Icelandic other-initiated repair expressionsHa‘Huh’ andHvað segirðu/Hvað sagðirðu‘What do/did you say’

It has been shown in the literature that cross-linguistically, the other-initiated repair element ‘huh’ is typically realised with rising intonation. Icelandic has exceptional status in this respect in that it has falling intonation withHa[haː] ‘huh’. The literature claims that it is language-specific interrogative prosody that accounts for this exceptional status of Icelandic. More specifically, it argues that falling intonation is the default for questions in Icelandic and that the other-initiated repair interjection shares its intonational features with interrogatives. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, using map-task data, it confirms previous results for the intonation of IcelandicHa, and in addition shows that its more complex relativeHvað segirðu/Hvað sagðirðu‘What do/did you say?’ is realised with falling intonation as well. Both expressions are realised with an H* pitch accent followed by downward pitch movement to L%. Secondly, the paper argues, for a number of reasons, against the assumption that question prosody is enough to account for the Icelandic pattern, and it suggests instead thatHaandHvað segirðu/Hvað sagðirðuare in fact not specifically marked in intonation, but are realised with a combination of pitch accent and boundary tone found across utterance types in Icelandic.

Odmianki znaczeniowe czasowników w opisie semantyczno‑syntaktycznym i w praktyce leksykograficznej (na przykładzie języka bułgarskiego)

The exponents of the category of definiteness / indefiniteness and a certain type of expressive expressions in Bulgarian and PolishThe paper focuses on the functions of the pronoun exponents of the semantic category of definiteness / indefiniteness in Bulgarian examples of the following type: Свършихме я. Тънко я преда. Свърши се вашата, etc. Their reference to sentences such as Свършихме я тази работа. allows interpreting the function of the phrase as thematic. This type of sentences was confronted with examples such as Тя му я изтърси една… И ти ми ги говориш едни… The features of intonation and the semantic features of the double object phrase indicate its rhematic nature. Specific formal traits of such sentences, including the usage of the exponents of the category of definiteness / indefiniteness, are related with their expressive markedness.

On the intonational features of yes/no interrogatives in English and Montenegrin

AbstractThis paper outlines the results of an analysis of syntactically marked yes/no interrogatives in American English and Montenegrin from the persepctive of intonation. The analysis, based on the theoretical framework of Autosegmental-Metrical Phonology and the use of the computer software package Praat, treats issues regarding the different types of pitch contours and boundary tones at the end of yes/no interrogatives, gathered from various American and Montenegrin TV talk shows. Particularly, it focuses on specific intonational constituents, which indicate and clarify the alternative meanings of these questions. Having in mind the very nature of TV talk shows, which are seen as a part of a semi-institutionalized discourse, we start from the assumption that one type of intonation contour will be the prevailing one in yes/no interrogatives in both languages. Furthermore, all melodic deviations within these structures will influence and modify their basic meaning. The findings partially confirm our hypothesis, indicating a difference in the terminal contour between the two languages.

Information status marking in spontaneous vs. read speech in story-telling tasks – Evidence from intonation analysis using GToBI

Two studies investigated whether speaking mode influences the way German speakers mark the information status of discourse referents in nuclear position. In Study 1, speakers produced narrations spontaneously on the basis of picture stories in which the information status of referents (new, accessible and given) was systematically varied. In Study 2, speakers saw the same pictures, but this time accompanied by text to be read out. Clear differences were found depending on speaking mode: In spontaneous speech, speakers always accented new referents. They did not use different pitch accent types to differentiate between new and accessible referents, nor did they always deaccent given referents. In addition, speakers often made use of low pitch accents in combination with high boundary tones to indicate continuity. In contrast to this, read speech was characterized by low boundary tones, consistent deaccentuation of given referents and the use of H+L* and H+!H* accents, for both new and accessible referents. The results are discussed in terms of the function of intonational features in communication. It is argued that reading intonation is not comparable to intonation in spontaneous speech, and that this has important consequences also for our choice of methodology in child language acquisition research.

A Cross-Gender Statistical Analysis of Tuvinian Intonation Features in Comparison With Uzbek and Azerbaijani

A Cross-Gender Statistical Analysis of Tuvinian Intonation Features in Comparison With Uzbek and Azerbaijani

Based on HMM Intonation Prosody Prediction of Tibetan TTS

This paper Analyze the features of Tibetan speech intonation, design the state of rhythm and observation of Tibetan TTS system, based on HMM the intonation forecasting model is given, and finally present to explore algorithm of the best rhythm state.

Acoustic features of English sentence production for English and Chinese native speakers: Intonational and temporal patterns

Intonation is utilized by languages in order to differently convey intention, meaning, and emotion. Chinese, a tonal language, assigns F0 formant frequencies to lexically important components within words; whereas English, a stress language, changes F0 patterns according to the speaker’s intended meaning or emotion, especially changing near the end of a phrase. As Chinese speakers produce other languages, especially a non-tonal language such as English, it is uncertain whether their intonation is the same as a native speaker. The purpose of this study is to compare intonation across Chinese and English speakers. An acoustical analysis was completed on 16 English and 32 Chinese speakers producing List 1 of the Hearing In Noise Test (HINT) sentences. Preliminary results show that Chinese speakers produce sentences with longer absolute duration than English speakers. Intonation features of sentence production such as F0 contour and temporal contours, as well as temporal features of English sentences such as temporal gap and sentence and word duration will also be compared. Findings will show the effect of L1 tonal language on producing a stress language, such as English.

Analysis and detection of mimicked speech based on prosodic features

This paper describes a work aimed towards understanding the art of mimicking by professional mimicry artists while imitating the speech characteristics of known persons, and also explores the possibility of detecting a given speech as genuine or impostor. This includes a systematic approach of collecting three categories of speech data, namely original speech of the mimicry artists, speech while mimicking chosen celebrities and original speech of the chosen celebrities, to analyze the variations in prosodic features. A method is described for the automatic extraction of relevant prosodic features in order to model speaker characteristics. Speech is automatically segmented as intonation phrases using speech/nonspeech classification. Further segmentation is done using valleys in energy contour. Intonation, duration and energy features are extracted for each of these segments. Intonation curve is approximated using Legendre polynomials. Other useful prosodic features include average jitter, average shimmer, total duration, voiced duration and change in energy. These prosodic features extracted from original speech of celebrities and mimicry artists are used for creating speaker models. Support Vector Machine (SVM) is used for creating speaker models, and detection of a given speech as genuine or impostor is attempted using a speaker verification framework of SVM models.

The intonation of polar questions in Italian: Where is the rise?

Earlier studies on Standard Italian describe polar questions as being characterised by a terminal rise, as opposed to a terminal fall for statements, where a low/falling accentual movement precedes the terminal part of the contour in both sentence types. The same is generally claimed for the Northern and Central Italian varieties (including Florentine, i.e. the variety from which Standard Italian stems), whereas Southern accents are characterised by an accentual rise followed by a terminal fall, being therefore the primary cue for question in non-terminal position. However, a closer look at the existing literature on regional Italian question intonation reveals that such a geographical distribution of intonational features across Italian accents is not that clear-cut. A reason for this discrepancy might be the different speaking styles – here intended as the broad spontaneous vs. read distinction – of the spoken productions analysed. The aim of this paper is to call into question the claim that a terminal rise preceded by an accentual low/fall is the most widespread intonational feature for marking questioning across Italian accents. The goal is to provide a clearer picture of question intonation in Italian by looking at the distribution of the rise as either on terminal or non-terminal position across a large number of varieties, where speech materials have been elicited with the same methodology, and they are therefore homogeneous with respect to speaking style. Intonation analysis has been carried out on spontaneous yes–no questions extracted from the Map Task dialogues collected in the CLIPS national corpus (Corpora e Lessici di Italiano Parlato e Scritto – Corpora and Lexicons of Spoken and Written Italian) covering 15 varieties of Italian. Results of this analysis on the Northern, Central, and Southern polar questions reveals that the accentual rise prevails, and that the distribution of the rise across varieties is independent of the geography.

Improvement of Tone Intelligibility for Average-Voice-Based Thai Speech Synthesis

Problem statement: Tone intelligibility in speech synthesis is an important attribute that should be taken into account. The tone correctness of the synthetic speech is degraded considerably in the average-voice-based HMM-based Thai speech synthesis. The tying mechanism in the decision tree based context clustering without appropriate criterion causes unexpected tone neutralization. Incorporation of the phrase intonation to the context clustering process in the training stage was proposed early. However, the tone correctness is not satisfied. Approach: This study proposes a number of tonal features including tone-geometrical features and phrase intonation features to be exploited in the context clustering process of HMM training stage. Results: In the experiments, subjective evaluations of both average voice and adapted voice in terms of the intelligibility of tone are conducted. Effects on decision trees of the extracted features are also evaluated. By considering gender in training speech, two core experiments were conducted. The first experiment shows that the proposed tonal features can improve the tone intelligibility for female speech model above that of male speech model, while the second experiment shows that the proposed tonal features improve the tone intelligibility for gender dependent model than for gender independent model. Conclusion: All of the experimental results confirm that the tone correctness of the synthesized speech from the average-voice-based HMM-based Thai speech synthesis is significantly improved when using most of the extracted features.

The realization of contrastive focus in Peruvian Spanish intonation

In this paper, declarative intonation contours from Peruvian Spanish speakers are compared between pragmatic conditions in order to observe potential differences in the prosodic realization of contrastive focus. To do so, an acoustic feature of intonation, the fundamental frequency (F0), is examined. Since focus in Quechua is realized through the use of evidential markers, it is hypothesized that Cuzco Spanish speakers may behave differently than Lima speakers in relatively less contact with Quechua. Two intonation features have been examined with relation to contrastive focus on the subject: peak alignment and peak height. While Lima speakers demonstrate earlier and higher peaks on the subject, similar to previous reports for Madrid and Peninsular Spanish, some Cuzco speakers use fewer prosodic cues, while others rely on post-focal deaccenting alone. Also, Cuzco speakers appear to behave similarly according to whether or not they are bilingual in Spanish and Quechua. This research demonstrates how focus in realized differently in two regional varieties of Peruvian Spanish and adds to our knowledge of how language contact may contribute to the development of alternate intonation patterns in Spanish.

The Characteristics of Intonation in Reading Sentences for Adults with Intellectual Disabilities

The Characteristics of Intonation in Reading Sentences for Adults with Intellectual Disabilities

Differential language markers of pathology in Autism, Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified and Specific Language Impairment

Language impairment is a common core feature in Pervasive Developmental Disorders (PDD) and Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Many studies have tried to define the specific language profiles of these disorders, some claiming the existence of overlaps, and others conceiving of them as separate categories. Fewer have sought to determine whether and how PDD-NOS language profile, including prosody, differs from those of Autistic Disorder (AD) and SLI. Here, 12 children with AD (mean age 9.75; sd 3.5), 10 with PDD-NOS (mean age 9.83; sd 2.17), and 13 children with SLI (mean age 9.17; sd 3.9) matched for age, sex and academic skills were explored for both receptive and expressive language skills. Prosody was also assessed with an intonation imitation task analyzed through automatic speech processing and compared to 70 typical developing controls matched for age and sex. A similar delay in phonology and vocabulary was observed in the three groups as were significant but variable differences between the groups in syntax, pragmatics and prosody. SLI showed correlations between chronological age and raw scores in all language tasks, while AD and PDD-NOS did not. Furthermore, SLI showed correlation within all raw scores in language tasks. Most of those correlations were also found in PDD-NOS but not in AD. In conclusion, these findings support the hypothesis that language skills in AD and SLI rely on different mechanisms, while PDD-NOS show an intermediate profile sharing some characteristics of both AD and SLI. They also suggest that expressive syntax, pragmatic skills and some intonation features could be considered as language differential markers of pathology, challenging the DSM-V proposal of broad criteria.

A comparison of maternal and child intonation: Does adult input support child production?

Intonation involves the musical aspects of speech production and consists of suprasegmental aspects of phonology (i.e., pitch, length and loudness). The development of intonation involves various changes throughout the first 2 years of life as children learn how to manipulate intonation features as their linguistic system develops. Evidence from the literature provides a mixed message related to the influence of surrounding adult models on intonation production. The current study observed intonation characteristics in 23 mother-child pairs. Results indicated that, in general, children did not directly imitate maternal intonation, but that maternal support assisted the production of wider contours.

Sounds of melody—Pitch patterns of speech in autism

The objective of this study was to find a pattern in vocalizations of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). We compared the intonational features of 15 children with ASD who showed speech, aged 4–10 years, with 10 age-matched typically developing controls. Exaggerated pitch, pitch range, pitch excursion and pitch contours were observed in speech of children with autism, but absent in age-matched controls. These exaggerated features, which are distinctive characteristics of motherese, were also seen in interactions of an independent group of 8 mothers of typical infants using child-directed speech. Our findings provide the first evidence of a distinct pattern in vocal output from children with autism. They also demonstrate that speech patterns might follow a delayed developmental trajectory in these children.

A pronunciation and vocabulary teaching aid for Spanish as a Foreign Language programs at Japanese universities utilizing a Spanish speech recognition system and corpora of academic Spanish

<p>This paper reports on a project which researchers at two universities in Japan developed for Spanish as a Foreign Language CALL materials, which has two features, a Spanish speech recognition system based on the AmiVoice Japanese speech recognition system; and a Spanish verb collocation-based vocabulary teaching aid based on a corpus of academic Spanish. The first step was the creation of a Spanish speech recognition system for Japanese university students based on the AmiVoice Japanese pronunciation recognition system developed by Advanced Media Incorporated. The second step was the selection of vocabulary for a specific genre of academic Spanish, which was done in the following way: (1) Articles in a Spanish-language academic journal on Spanish Literature, Culture, History, and Language (themes typically chosen by students for graduation theses) compiled and published annually in Japan were used as the source of data for the compilation of a corpus. (2) All the verbs were extracted from the data. (3) The extracted verbs were compared with a corpus of verbs from graduation theses written in Japanese by Japanese university students and (4) by taking into account their needs for learning verbs, a list of verb-centered collocations was compiled. Finally, we developed a user-friendly Spanish pronunciation and verb collocation-based vocabulary teaching aid. The aid displays the verb collocations on a computer screen during pronunciation training. The training had two phases. The first phase required Japanese university students to carefully and repeatedly listen to model pronunciation examples of the vocabulary items, and to pronounce the vocabulary. This pronunciation training is intended to contribute to effective memorizing of the verb collocations. The next phase required the students to repeat the vocabulary items at the rate of the model utterance as well as to imitate the stress and other intonation features. This training is expected to help Japanese students speak Spanish more fluently.</p>

The relationship between meaning and intonation in non-exhaustive answers: Evidence from Basque

In this paper we analyze the intonational properties of a type of focus construction that has been understudied, represented by answers to wh -questions in which the constituent that fills the variable does not do so exhaustively, that is, it does not provide an exhaustive answer because the speaker cannot commit to asserting that the other potential alternative candidates to fill the variable are cancelled. This type of narrow focus, Non-Exhaustive Narrow Focus (NENF), is different from Exhaustive Narrow Focus (ENF), in which a constituent fills the variable of the question exhaustively, with a concomitant cancellation of the rest of the focal alternatives. Our claim is that natural languages have the means to distinguish ENF and NENF unambiguously through prosodic means. In the present study, we show that speakers of (Northern Bizkaian) Basque assign particular intonational features to answers to wh -questions that should be interpreted non-exhaustively. In our experiment, we measured peak scaling of accents in the subject and the verb in ENF and NENF utterances. The results show that NENF is distinguished from ENF in having a pitch accent on the verb with a higher F0 value, almost as if the verb were focalized. In fact, we compared the intonational patterns of NENF with Verum Focus constructions, in which the polarity of the event expressed by the verb is focalized, and there were no significant differences in the verbal peaks in NENF and VF. There were no significant differences in peak scaling in the subject's stressed syllable between ENF and NENF, and neither were there any differences between NENF and VF. The paper offers a semantic analysis of the differences between ENF and NENF, by claiming that NENF is a split focus construction, in which both the subject and the polarity (or rather, the pairing between the subject and the polarity) constitute the focus of the utterance.

Phonetics and phonology of Cuzco Quechua declarative intonation: An instrumental analysis

This paper offers an analysis of Cuzco Quechua intonation using experimental techniques to examine one of the acoustic cues of pitch, the fundamental frequency or F0. While previous descriptions in the literature are based on auditory impression, in the present study recordings were made of read declaratives produced by native Quechua speakers in Cuzco, Peru. This paper provides an initial characterization of high and low tones with respect to the stressed syllable, as well as information regarding the height and alignment of these tones. In addition, the intonational marking of intermediate phrases within an utterance is discussed. Research on Quechua intonation can be used to begin to address several issues regarding the intonation of languages in contact, as well as to provide data for a future cross-linguistic analysis of indigenous language intonation features.