F0 Peak Research Articles

Co-speech head nods are used to enhance prosodic prominence at different levels of narrow focus in French.

Previous research has shown that prosodic structure can regulate the relationship between co-speech gestures and speech itself. Most co-speech studies have focused on manual gestures, but head movements have also been observed to accompany speech events by Munhall, Jones, Callan, Kuratate, and Vatikiotis-Bateson [(2004). Psychol. Sci. 15(2), 133-137], and these co-verbal gestures may be linked to prosodic prominence, as shown by Esteve-Gibert, Borrás-Comes, Asor, Swerts, and Prieto [(2017). J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 141(6), 4727-4739], Hadar, Steiner, Grant, and Rose [(1984). Hum. Mov. Sci. 3, 237-245], and House, Beskow, and Granström [(2001). Lang. Speech 26(2), 117-129]. This study examines how the timing and magnitude of head nods may be related to degrees of prosodic prominence connected to different focus conditions. Using electromagnetic articulometry, a time-varying signal of vertical head movement for 12 native French speakers was generated to examine the relationship between head nod gestures and F0 peaks. The results suggest that speakers use two different alignment strategies, which integrate both temporal and magnitudinal aspects of the gesture. Some evidence of inter-speaker preferences in the use of the two strategies was observed, although the inter-speaker variability is not categorical. Importantly, prosodic prominence itself is not the cause of the difference between the two strategies, but instead magnifies their inherent differences. In this way, the use of co-speech head nod gestures under French focus conditions can be considered as a method of prosodic enhancement.

The interaction of tonal alignment with vowel length and syllable structure in Lebanese Arabic

Research on a variety of languages has shown that tonal alignment in pitch accents can be influenced by segmental factors such as syllable structure, onset type, and phonological vowel length (e.g., Ladd et al., 2000; Maddieson, 1997). However, the majority of work on these topics has been on European languages. The current study examines the interaction of these factors in the Beirut dialect of Lebanese Arabic. Disyllabic words with initial, stressed syllables that were either open or closed and contained either a long or a short vowel and had a simple or complex onset were examined when non-focused and in contrastive focus. Contrastive focus was associated with a wider f0 range. The focus pitch accent was H* or L+H*. In terms of segmental effects, neither vowel length nor syllable structure had a significant effect on tonal alignment. Timing of the f0 peak was found to be consistently about 45 msec from vowel onset. This study contributes to the literature on tonal alignment by examining a variety of Arabic that is understudied in terms of intonation.

Cross-linguistic perception of Spanish intonation by Chinese speakers: Effects of linguistic experience and prosodic features

This study aims to explore the cross-linguistic perception of Spanish intonation patterns and the role of linguistic experience and prosodic features in identifying the question-statement contrasts. To this end, 43 Spanish native listeners and 75 Chinese learners of Spanish were presented with auditory stimuli in a gating paradigm for the recognition of sentence types. The results showed that listeners’ perception of target intonational contours was highly dependent on their language experience. Although Spanish listeners outperformed Chinese learners in perceiving different intonational cues, most Chinese learners were able to correctly identify sentence types after hearing the initial F0 peak due to the positive transfer of their tonal processing ability in their native language. In addition, our data revealed that the position of the final stressed syllable might also be a relevant factor for discriminating the sentence type depending on the length of the utterance. Overall, the findings seem to suggest a complex integration mechanism for cross-linguistic intonation perception, in which listeners’ language specificity and the prosodic structures of the materials should be accounted for evaluating non-native auditory performance.

Visual cues influence prosody perception among individuals with cochlear implants

Understanding a talker’s intention conveyed through prosody is essential for successful speech communication. Although visual speech cues are typically characterized by lip movements, there are also visual gestures including head tilts and eyebrow raises that signal prosody. Listeners with cochlear implants (CIs) may rely on these visual cues to solidify their prosody perception and guard against misinterpretations, particularly because of their poor perception of voice pitch. This study used audio-visual recordings of sentences in which a talker sometimes focused one word to signify a change in meaning. After characterizing acoustic and visual prosody cues in this stimulus set, we made prosodically mismatched variants of the stimuli by transplanting prosodically focused audio onto broad focus (i.e., prosodically unfocused) video, and vice versa. Visual influences on prosody perception were measured using acoustic analysis of participant reproductions in a vocal mimicry task. Results show reproduction of F0 contour—a key acoustic marker of prosodic focus—is influenced by perception of visual prosody cues. Specifically, visual cues indicating a focused word led to higher peak F0 in vocal reproductions of that word in the sentence. These results underscore the importance of multisensory information in supporting prosody perception for listeners with hearing loss.

The Intonation of Peruvian Amazonian Spanish Declaratives: An Exploration of Spontaneous Speech

The present study explores intonational patterns in spontaneous speech in Peruvian Amazonian Spanish (PAS). The data came from 12 monolingual Spanish speakers in the city of Pucallpa, where the Spanish language has historically been in contact with the Amazonian language Shipibo-Konibo. The speakers responded to an open-ended prompt that elicited broad focus declaratives. Acoustic information from 1524 pitch accents was extracted from 194 sentences and analyzed using Praat. The analysis focused on five features: F0 rises, F0 peak alignment, downstepping, final lowering, and cases of stress clash. The results not only supported previous research on this variety that came from read speech tasks (e.g., F0 peaks consistently aligned with the stressed syllable), but also highlighted the importance of using multiple methodologies to gain a more comprehensive understanding of PAS prosody. Specifically, the varied sentence lengths and structures common in spontaneous speech provided new insights into downstepping, final lowering, and stress clash in PAS intonation. Overall, these results contribute to the growing literature on Spanish prosody in shared linguistic spaces and lend support for trends (such as F0 peak alignment) that have been reported in other language contact varieties.

The intonation of Persian polar questions

Statements and questions in Persian are distinguished not only by morpho-syntactic but also by intonational means. This paper studies how questions are signaled intonationally in utterances that have no morpho-syntactic cues. A production experiment was designed that systematically manipulated sentence mode as well as the within-word position of stress in the target words in pre-nuclear and nuclear accentual positions. Our results showed that H pre-nuclear and nuclear peaks are higher and located earlier in question than statement utterances. Also, the rise to a F0 peak as well as the following fall in the pre-nuclear and nuclear accentual positions are shorter and steeper in the question contour. The data further revealed that the exact phonetic realization of pre-nuclear and nuclear accentual rises and falls depended on the proximity of adjacent tonal targets in the different word stress conditions we set up. Our findings readily lend themselves to an auto-segmental approach to intonational phonology which treats tunes as strings of independent categorically distinct tonal units associated with specific elements in the segmental structure.

Linear site responses from U.S. borehole arrays: Primary site-response parameters and proxies

Site response, site resonance in particular, is a great concern in earthquake engineering. However, scientists and engineers have yet to reach a consensus on the most important parameters or proxies to characterize or quantify site response. In this investigation, we identified the most important parameters at 12 borehole arrays in the United States by analyzing weak-motion empirical and theoretical site responses in terms of soil-to-rock spectral ratios and ratios of response spectra at each site in the frequency range of engineering interest, 0.1–10 Hz (i.e., a period range of 0.1–10 s). From these ratios, we extracted two sets of parameter pairs: the fundamental and peak mode frequencies, f0 and fp, respectively, and their corresponding amplifications, A0 and Ap, respectively. We also characterized the Vs profiles using the shear-wave velocity ratio (Rj) and impedance ratio IRj and determined the maximum velocity and impedance ratios (Rmax and IRmax) for these borehole arrays. Both the linear empirical and theoretical results confirm that site response is site-specific and controlled predominantly by each site's in situ shear-wave velocity (Vs) profile in terms of shear-wave velocity ratios or impedance ratios, the maximum velocity or impedance ratio in particular. Our studies suggest that a minimum bedrock-sediment shear-wave velocity ratio of about 2.5 (i.e., Rmax≥2.5) or impedance ratios of about 3.0 (i.e., IRmax ≥ 3.0) is required to generate site resonance. Our results show that the fundamental mode is the most important mode for quantifying site response for engineering purposes at sites where amplifications are controlled by site resonance because it is the dominant mode on the ratios of response spectra. We also compared five proxies derived from each site's velocity profile—the time-averaged shear-wave velocity for the top 30 m (VS30), depth to bedrock or basin depth (Zb), time-averaged shear-wave velocity of sediment (Vs‾), ratio of bedrock shear-wave velocity (Vsb) to Vs‾ (Rmax), and ratio of bedrock impedance to the average sediment impedance (IRmax)—with the empirical fundamental resonant mode parameters. The comparisons revealed that Zb and Rmax (or IRmax) are the best pair of proxies to parameterize the fundamental resonant mode parameters. The comparisons also show that VS30 is not the best proxy and that no single proxy is sufficient to parameterize the fundamental resonant mode parameters.

Stimulation Rate and Voice Pitch Perception in Cochlear Implants.

The stimulation rate in cochlear implant (CI) sound coding, or the "carrier" rate in pulses per second (pps), is known to influence pitch perception, as well as loudness perception and sound quality. Our main objective was to investigate the effects of reduced carrier rate on the loudness and pitch of coded speech samples. We describe two experiments with 16 Nucleus® CI users, where we controlled modulation characteristics and carrier rate using Spectral and Temporal Enhanced Processing (STEP), a novel experimental multichannel sound coder. We used a fixed set of threshold and comfortable stimulation levels for each subject, obtained from clinical MAPs. In the first experiment, we determined equivalence for voice pitch ranking and voice gender categorization between the Advanced Combination Encoder (ACE), a widely used clinical strategy in Nucleus® recipients, and STEP for fundamental frequencies (F0) 120-250Hz. In the second experiment, loudness was determined as a function of the input amplitude of speech samples for carrier rates of 1000, 500, and 250 pps per channel. Then, using equally loud sound coder programs, we evaluated the effect of carrier rate on voice pitch perception. Although nearly all subjects could categorize voice gender significantly above chance, pitch ranking varied across subjects. Overall, carrier rate did not substantially affect voice pitch ranking or voice gender categorization: as long as the carrier rate was at least twice the fundamental frequency, or when stimulation pulses for the lowest, 250 pps carrier were aligned to F0 peaks. These results indicate that carrier rates as low as 250 pps per channel are sufficient to support functional voice pitch perception for those CI users sensitive to temporal pitch cues; at least when temporal modulations and pulse timings in the coder output are well controlled by novel strategies such as STEP.

Range in the Use and Realization of BIN in African American English.

This paper jointly considers syntactic, semantic, and phonological/phonetic factors in approaching an understanding of BIN, a remote past marker in African American English that has been described as "stressed." It brings together data from the Corpus of Regional African American Language (CORAAL) and a production study in a small African American English-speaking community in southwest Louisiana to investigate the use and phonetic realization of BIN constructions. Only 20 instances of BIN constructions were found in CORAAL. This sparsity was not simply due to a dearth of semantic contexts for BIN in the interviews, since 122 instances of semantically equivalent been + temporal adverbial variants were also found. These results raise questions about the extent to which BIN constructions and been + temporal adverbial variants are used in different pragmatic and discourse contexts as well as in different speech styles. The production study elicited BIN and past participle been constructions in controlled syntactic and semantic environments. The phonetic realization of BIN was found to be distributed over the entire utterance rather than localized to BIN. BIN utterances were distinguished from past participle been utterances by having higher ratios of fundamental frequency (F0), intensity, and duration in BIN/been relative to preceding and following material in the utterance. In both studies, BIN utterances were generally realized with a high F0 peak on BIN and a reduced F0 range in the post-BIN region, with variability in the presence and kinds of F0 movements utterance-initially and utterance-finally, as well as in F0 downtrends in the post-BIN region.

경상 방언 의문문 작용역의 지각 구분*

A wh-phrase positioned in an embedded clause can be interpreted as having a matrix scope if the sentence is produced with proper prosodic structures such as the wh-intonation. In a previous experiment, a sentence with a wh-phrase in an embedded clause was given to 40 speakers of Gyeongsang Korean. A script containing the sentence was provided to induce a matrix scope interpretation for the wh-phrase. These 40 utterances were prepared as stimuli for a perception test to verify whether the wh-phrases in the stimuli were perceived as having matrix scopes. Each utterance was played thrice to 24 subjects. The results showed that more than half of the 72 responses indicated a preference for an embedded scope rather than a matrix scope in 20 of the utterances. A multiple linear regression analysis showed that the matrix scope responses were best predicted by the magnitude of the pitch prominence in a prosodic word consisting of an embedded verb and a complementizer. The pitch prominence was calculated by subtracting the fundamental frequency (F0) at the right edge of the prosodic word from the peak F0 in the same prosodic word. The smaller the magnitude, the more matrix responses there were. These results suggest that the categorical perception of wh-scopes is based on the magnitude of pitch prominence.

Word Order, Intonation, and Prosodic Phrasing: Individual Differences in the Production and Identification of Narrow and Wide Focus in Urdu

This study investigates speaker based variation in the use of word order and intonation to mark narrow and wide focus in Urdu. The identification of focus type and position, as well as the prosodic phrasing of declarative sentences produced in the target focus conditions, is also discussed. The results of a semi-spontaneous production experiment indicated no preference for a linear position, as the focused nouns were mostly placed in situ (89%). The analysis of phonetic cues showed significant inter- and intraspeaker variation in participants’ use of longer noun duration, higher F0 peak, and wider F0 range in the narrowly focused nouns, as compared with their counterparts produced in wide focus. In the identification survey conducted online, the consistent use of phonetic cues in speech production was found to influence the correct identification of narrow focus and the position of focused nouns. Another online survey, concerning the prosodic phrasing of sentences produced in narrow and wide focus, showed participants’ slight preference for a recursive Intonational Phrase boundary on the left edge of the narrowly focused nouns. The results of both the surveys show that Urdu speakers vary in their identification of focus as well as their choice of prosodic phrasing in the target contexts. This research highlights the role of individual variation in the use of word order and phonetic cues to mark narrow and wide focus in Urdu. It also illustrates that the identification of focus type and phrasing is far from uniform. These findings have implications for the analysis of intonation in general, as this study testifies that the production and identification of intonation and prosodic phrasing are not invariable and speakers and listeners differ in their use of available linguistic means (word order vs. intonational categories), the selection, as well as the manipulation of phonetic cues.

Prosodic realization of tonal target and F0 peak alignment in Mandarin neutral tone

Abstract Neutral tone in Mandarin is generally believed to lack tonal identity and exhibit more variability in its phonetic realization. We examined the tonal target of neutral tone in a prosodic word consisting of a full syllable (S) and one, two, or three neutral-tone syllables. In the experiment, the test words, presented in isolation and embedded in a carrier sentence, were read in two intonation patterns: declarative and interrogative. The results showed: (1) the tonal target of neutral tone is L(ow) at the end of the intonation phrase in declarative intonation and M(id) in question intonation; (2) its phonetic realization is influenced by intonation patterns, the tone of S and the number of neutral-tone syllables in the prosodic word; (3) the influence of the tone of S is more robust in shorter sequences than in longer ones with three neutral-tone syllables; (4) placement of the F0 peak in T2 (LH) and the neutral tone immediately following T3 (L) is susceptible to the number of neutral-tone syllables. It seems clear from our study that while the tonal target of neutral tone is related to prosodic structure, its actual F0 scaling is sensitive to prosodic manipulations such as intonation patterns and prosodic word length. In addition, tonelessness of neutral tone allows for more freedom in the alignment of the F0 peak, whose temporal coordination with its segmental host is, nevertheless, subject to both phonological and phonetic constraints.

F0 Peak Alignment, F0 Peak Location, and Focus Perception in Taif Arabic

The encoding of focus and its role in Taif Arabic has not been understood fully. A recent production study found significant acoustic differences between syntactically identical utterances with focus and without focus. The current study aims to investigate further F0 peak alignment, F0 peak location and (b) focus perception in Taif Arabic. The acoustic analyses of F0 peak alignment and F0 peak location show that only the F0 peak alignment of the post-focus words was realized earlier than that of their counterparts under neutral-focus condition, and the location of the F0 peak of the stressed syllable of the post-focus words was lower than that of their counterparts in neutral-focus utterances. In focus perception, correct focus identification was 85% for initial focus and 71% for penultimate focus. These findings have implications for both focus typology and language variations.

Evidence for F0 preplanning with delayed stimuli

A sentence production experiment was conducted to investigate F0 preplanning, specifically examining whether speakers plan pitch targets according to utterance length and whether preplanning limits dynamic control of pitch range. The experiment used a novel elicitation method in which visual stimuli that cue part of the utterance are delayed so that participants initiate the utterance without knowledge of its length. Participants read sentences in which the subject noun phrase was composed of one, two, or three conjoined noun phrases with controlled lexical and phonological content (e.g. Eight red weasels and nine green rhinos and eight blue llamas live in the zoo). On half of the trials with two and three noun phrases, the presentation of the visual stimuli that cued non-initial phrases (e.g., nine green rhinos and eight blue llamas) was delayed until after detection of utterance initiation. The effects of length and delay on F0 measures were analyzed. The results showed the length effect; the utterance-initial F0 peak was highest when three phrases were presented initially and lowest when one phrase was presented initially. Moreover, the utterance-initial peak in delayed stimuli was similar to that of the single phrase stimuli. In non-initial phrases, the pitch range of the delayed stimuli was constrained such that the F0 peak of the stimuli without delay was higher than those with delay. The findings suggest that speakers plan F0 targets and range before production, and such planning restricts subsequent control of F0.

Characterization of Primary Muscle Tension Dysphonia Using Acoustic and Aerodynamic Voice Metrics

Objectives/HypothesisThe objectives of this study were to (1) identify optimal clusters of 15 standard acoustic and aerodynamic voice metrics recommended by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) to improve characterization of patients with primary muscle tension dysphonia (pMTD) and (2) identify combinations of these 15 metrics that could differentiate pMTD from other types of voice disorders. Study DesignRetrospective multiparametric MethodsRandom forest modeling, independent t-tests, logistic regression, and affinity propagation clustering were implemented on a retrospective dataset of 15 acoustic and aerodynamic metrics. ResultsTen percent of patients seen at the New York University (NYU) Voice Center over two years met the study criteria for pMTD (92 out of 983 patients), with 65 patients with pMTD and 701 of non-pMTD patients with complete data across all 15 acoustic and aerodynamic voice metrics. PCA plots and affinity propagation clustering demonstrated substantial overlap between the two groups on these parameters. The highest ranked parameters by level of importance with random forest models—(1) mean airflow during voicing (L/sec), (2) mean SPL during voicing (dB), (3) mean peak air pressure (cmH2O), (4) highest F0 (Hz), and (5) CPP mean vowel (dB)—accounted for only 65% of variance. T-tests showed three of these parameters—(1) CPP mean vowel (dB), (2) highest F0 (Hz), and (3) mean peak air pressure (cmH2O)—were statistically significant; however, the log2-fold change for each parameter was minimal. ConclusionComputational models and multivariate statistical testing on 15 acoustic and aerodynamic voice metrics were unable to adequately characterize pMTD and determine differences between the two groups (pMTD and non-pMTD). Further validation of these metrics is needed with voice elicitation tasks that target physiological challenges to the vocal system from baseline vocal acoustic and aerodynamic ouput. Future work should also place greater focus on validating metrics of physiological correlates (eg, neuromuscular processes, laryngeal-respiratory kinematics) across the vocal subsystems over traditional vocal output measures (eg, acoustics, aerodynamics) for patients with pMTD. Level of EvidenceII

Characterizing Fundamental Resonance Peaks on Flat-Lying Sediments Using Multiple Spectral Ratio Methods: An Example from the Atlantic Coastal Plain, Eastern United States

ABSTRACT Damaging ground motions from the 2011 Mw 5.8 Virginia earthquake were likely increased due to site amplification from the unconsolidated sediments of the Atlantic Coastal Plain (ACP), highlighting the need to understand site response on these widespread strata along the coastal regions of the eastern United States. The horizontal-to-vertical spectral ratio (HVSR) method, using either earthquake signals or ambient noise as input, offers an appealing method for measuring site response on laterally extensive sediments, because it requires a single seismometer rather than requiring a nearby bedrock site to compute a horizontal sediment-to-bedrock spectral ratio (SBSR). Although previous studies show mixed results when comparing the two methods, the majority of these studies investigated site responses in confined sedimentary basins that can generate substantial 3D effects or have relatively small reflection coefficients at their base. In contrast, the flat-lying ACP strata and the underlying bedrock reflector should cause 1D resonance effects to dominate site response, with amplification of the fundamental resonance peaks controlled by the strong impedance contrast between the base of the sediments and the underlying bedrock. We compare site-response estimates on the ACP strata derived using the HVSR and SBSR methods from teleseismic signals recorded by regional arrays and observe a close match in the frequencies of the fundamental resonance peak (f0) determined by both methods. We find that correcting the HVSR amplitude using source term information from a bedrock site and multiplying the peak by a factor of 1.2 results in amplitude peaks that, on average, match SBSR results within a factor of 2. We therefore conclude that the HVSR method may successfully estimate regional linear weak-motion site-response amplifications from the ACP, or similar geologic environments, when appropriate region-specific corrections to the amplitude ratios are used.

The intonation of yes–no questions in Luganda

The intonation of yes–no questions in Luganda (Bantu, Uganda) has only been sketched in passing. Hyman states that Luganda yes–no questions are marked by a ‘super-high tone’ immediately following the last lexical high tone in the sentence, but there is little agreement in the literature about the intonation of yes–no questions if there is no lexical high tone in the sentence. To clarify the differences between statements and yes–no questions in Luganda, an acoustic production study was conducted. Nineteen speakers read aloud sentences differing in the location of the last lexical high tone relative to the end of the sentence. Each sentence was produced as a statement and as a question. Analysis of f0 measurements supported Hyman’s description of sentences with a lexical high tone, since the questions had an f0 peak that was higher and later than in the corresponding statements. For sentences without a lexical high tone, yes–no questions were found to begin with an interval in which f0 is higher than in corresponding statements, and end with a final f0 value lower than in statements. It is proposed that the yes–no question marker is a phrase accent (H–). Like the high phrase accent posited by Pierrehumbert for English, this intonational tone is associated after the last tone in the phrase, but in Luganda that last tone is lexical, rather than being an intonational focus marker as in English. This H–accent is subject to upstep in the position after a high tone.

F0 timing in Luganda: Effects of phrase position and gone category

In Luganda (Bantu, Uganda), there is a contrast between early and late high tone, differing in the timing of the f0 peak relative to the consonant and vowel intervals of the associated syllable. According to the extensive transcription-based literature on the language, this contrast is limited to “long” syllables (those with a long vowel or coda), and to short word-final syllables. In this study, these claims are tested in two production studies. As in other languages, the timing of f0 peaks was found to be sensitive to the duration of the onset-vowel interval in the high-toned syllable, with longer onset-vowel duration associated with a later f0 peak. The late high tones were found to have a significantly greater peak delay than early high tone, but only in long syllables with a long vowel or diphthong. Short syllables had early high tone (shorter peak delay) in sentence-final words, but word position had no effect. The results suggest that the phenomenon that previous studies have described in terms of the distribution of falling tones is better seen as a phonetic effect of phrasal position on f0 peak timing, as has been observed in languages such as English, Spanish, and Serbian.

Role of f0 alignment in distinguishing intonation categories: evidence from American english

Under the autosegmental-metrical (AM) theory of intonation, the temporal alignment of fundamental frequency (F0) patterns with respect to syllables has been claimed to distinguish pitch accent categories. Several experiments test whether differences in F0 peak or valley alignment in American English phrases would produce evidence consistent with a change from (1) a H* to a H+L* pitch accent, and (2) a L* to a L+H* pitch accent. Four stimulus series were constructed in which F0 peak or valley alignment was shifted across portions of short phrases with varying stress. In Experiment 1, participants discriminated pairs of stimuli in an AX task. In Experiment 2, participants classified stimuli as category exemplars using an AXB task. In Experiment 3, participants imitated stimuli; the alignment of F0 peaks and valleys in their productions was measured. Finally, in Experiment 4, participants judged the relative prominence of initial and final syllables in stimuli to determine whether alignment differences generated a stress shift. The results support the distinctions between H* and H+L* and between L+H* and L*. Moreover, evidence consistent with an additional category not currently predicted by most AM theories was obtained, which is proposed here to be H*+H. The results have implications for understanding phonological contrasts, phonetic interpolation in English intonation, and the transcription of prosodic contrasts in corpus-based analysis.

한국어 의문사 작용역을 나타내는 운율 단서: 경북 방언을 중심으로*

A wh-phrase in an embedded sentence may have either an embedded or a matrix scope. Interpretation of a wh-phrase with a matrix scope has tended to be syntactically unacceptable unless the sentence reads with a wh-intonation. Previous studies have found two differences in prosodic characteristics between sentences with matrix and embedded scopes. Firstly, peak F0s in wh-phrases produced with an F0 compression wh-intonation are higher than those in indirect questions, and peak F0s in matrix verbs are lower than those in sentences with embedded scope. Secondly, a substantial F0 drop is found at the end of embedded sentences in indirect questions, whereas no F0 reduction at the same point is noticed in sentences with a matrix scope produced with a high plateau wh-intonation. However, these characteristics were not found in our experiment. This showed that a more compelling difference exists in the values obtained from subtraction between the peak F0s of each word (or a word plus an ending or case marker) and the F0s at the end of the word. Specifically, the gap between the peak F0 in a word composed with an embedded verb and the F0 at the end of the word, which is a complementizer in Korean, is large in embedded wh-scope sentences and low in matrix wh-scope sentences.