Intonation Conditions Research Articles

How prior experience with pitch accents shapes the perception of word and sentence stress

ABSTRACT Listeners perceive high or rising pitch as stressed – at the word and sentence level (high-pitch bias). Since stressed syllables can also be low-pitched, this bias may lead to misinterpretations of word and sentence stress and thus slow down speech comprehension. We investigate the effect of immediate exposure with high- vs. low-pitched stressed syllables on the identification of word and sentence stress. Participants were exposed to utterances containing only high- vs. low-pitched stressed syllables. In experimental trials, they then heard either trisyllabic words with word stress on the second syllable (Experiment 1) or three-word-sentences with sentence stress on the second word (Experiment 2) and indicated the position of word/sentence stress. Stimuli were presented in three intonation conditions (high-pitched first, second, or third syllable/word). Both experiments endorsed the high-pitch bias, with an increase after high-pitch exposure. Our results suggest a speaker-independent re-weighting of acoustic cues to stress, which is driven by experience.

Prenuclear L∗+H Activates Alternatives for the Accented Word.

Previous processing studies have shown that constituents that are prosodically marked as focus lead to an activation of alternatives. We investigate the processing of constituents that are prosodically marked as contrastive topics. In German, contrastive topics are prosodically realized by prenuclear L∗+H accents. Our study tests (a) whether prenuclear accents (as opposed to nuclear accents) are able to activate contrastive alternatives, (b) whether they do this in the same way as constituents prosodically marked as focus with nuclear accents do, which is important for semantic modeling, and (c) whether the activation of alternatives is caused by pitch accent type (prenuclear L∗+H as contrastive accent vs. prenuclear L+H∗ as non-contrastive accent) or by differences in F0-excursion (related to prominence). We conducted two visual-world eye-tracking studies, in which German listeners heard declarative utterances (e.g., The swimmer wanted to put on flappers) and watched displays that depicted four printed words: one that was a contrastive alternative to the subject noun (e.g., diver), one that was non-contrastively related to it (e.g., sports), the object (e.g., flappers), which had to be clicked, and an unrelated distractor. Experiment 1 presented participants with two naturally produced intonation conditions, a broad focus control condition with a prenuclear L+H∗ accent on the subject and a contrastive topic condition with a prenuclear L∗+H accent. The results showed that participants fixated more on the contrastive alternative when the subject was produced with an L∗+H accent, with the same effect size and timing as reported for focus constituents. Experiment 2 resynthesized the stimuli so that peak height and F0-excursion were the same across intonation conditions. The effect was the same, but the time course was slightly later. Our results suggest that prenuclear L∗+H immediately leads to the activation of alternatives during online processing, and that the F0-excursion of the accent lends little. The results are discussed with regard to the processing of contrastive focus accents and theories of contrastive topic.

Effect of F0 contour on perception of Mandarin Chinese speech against masking.

Intonation has many perceptually significant functions in language that contribute to speech recognition. This study aims to investigate whether intonation cues affect the unmasking of Mandarin Chinese speech in the presence of interfering sounds. Specifically, intelligibility of multi-tone Mandarin Chinese sentences with maskers consisting of either two-talker speech or steady-state noise was measured in three (flattened, typical, and exaggerated) intonation conditions. Different from most of the previous studies, the present study only manipulate and modify the intonation information but preserve tone information. The results showed that recognition of the final keywords in multi-tone Mandarin Chinese sentences was much better under the original F0 contour condition than the decreased F0 contour or exaggerated F0 contour conditions whenever there was a noise or speech masker, and an exaggerated F0 contour reduced the intelligibility of Mandarin Chinese more under the speech masker condition than that under the noise masker condition. These results suggested that speech in a tone language (Mandarin Chinese) is harder to understand when the intonation is unnatural, even if the tone information is preserved, and an unnatural intonation contour decreases releasing Mandarin Chinese speech from masking, especially in a multi-person talking environment.

Intonation and gesture as bootstrapping devices in speaker uncertainty

This study investigates 3- to 5-year-old children’s sensitivity to lexical, intonational and gestural information in the comprehension of speaker uncertainty. Most previous studies on children’s understanding of speaker certainty and uncertainty across languages have focused on the comprehension of lexical markers, and little is known about the potential facilitation effects of intonational and gestural features in this process. A total of 102 3- to 5-year-old Catalan-speaking children participated in a comprehension task which involved the detection of uncertainty in materials that combined lexical, intonational and gestural markers. In a between-subjects design, the children were either administered the lexical condition (where they were exposed to lexical and gestural cues to uncertainty) or the intonation condition (where they were exposed to intonational and gestural cues to uncertainty). Within each condition, three different presentation formats were used (audio-only, visual-only and audio-visual) in a within-subjects design. The results indicated that all the children performed better overall when they had gestural cues present. Furthermore, in comparison with the older group, the younger group was more sensitive to intonational marking of speaker uncertainty than to lexical marking. This evidence suggests that the intonational and gestural features of communicative interactions may act as bootstrapping mechanisms in early pragmatic development.

The limits of metrical segmentation: intonation modulates infants' extraction of embedded trochees.

We tested German nine-month-olds' reliance on pitch and metrical stress for segmentation. In a headturn-preference paradigm, infants were familiarized with trisyllabic words (weak-strong-weak (WSW) stress pattern) in sentence-contexts. The words were presented in one of three naturally occurring intonation conditions: one in which high pitch was aligned with the stressed syllable and two misalignment conditions (with high pitch preceding vs. following the stressed syllable). Infants were tested on the SW unit of the WSW carriers. Experiment 1 showed recognition only when the stressed syllable was high-pitched. Intonation of test items (similar vs. dissimilar to familiarization) had no influence (Experiment 2). Thus, German nine-month-olds perceive stressed syllables as word onsets only when high-pitched, although they already generalize over different pitch contours. Different mechanisms underlying this pattern of results are discussed.

The Actual vs. Predicted Effects of Intonation Accuracy on Vocal Performance Quality

The belief that intonation accuracy is a key determinant of musical performance quality is ubiquitous in music pedagogy; nonetheless, empirical validation of this belief is lacking. We investigated the effects of intonation accuracy on perceived performance quality and assessed whether music professionals’ beliefs about the importance of intonation are consistent with these effects. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants listened to vocal performances that were in tune, moderately out of tune, or severely out of tune. Only severe mistunings caused decreases in performance quality ratings for intonation insensitive listeners (those who performed poorly on a mistuning detection prescreening). However, both moderate and severe mistunings were detrimental to the ratings of intonation sensitive listeners. These results indicate that moderate mistunings exert a negative influence on the perceived quality of a performance only if the listener can explicitly detect the mistunings. If a listener cannot explicitly detect the mistunings, those mistunings do not implicitly exert a negative influence on the perception of the performance. In Experiment 3, music professionals heard samples of performances from Experiments 1 and 2 in each intonation condition and were asked to estimate the impact of the mistunings on listeners’ ratings of performance quality. Their predictions were compared to the actual performance quality ratings obtained in Experiment 2. Music professionals overestimated the impact of moderate mistunings for both intonation sensitive and insensitive listeners, suggesting that music professionals may hold inaccurate beliefs about the importance of intonation accuracy in vocal performance.

Perception of melodic intonation in performances with and without vibrato

We compared perception of mistuned intervals in unaccompanied melodies performed by trumpet, violin, and voice, and examined whether there were differences between the three timbres in performances with and without vibrato. Participants were 144 university music students. Listeners heard the three unaccompanied solo performers in two vibrato conditions (with and without vibrato), and three intonation conditions (selected melodic intervals were in tune, sharp 25 cents, or flat 25 cents relative to equal temperament). All three stimuli were perceived as more out of tune when there was no vibrato compared to vibrato. In performances without vibrato, violin was judged as more out of tune than voice and trumpet across all three tuning conditions. Melodies performed with vibrato were judged differently: Violin was judged as least in tune for intervals mistuned in the flat direction, trumpet was heard as least in tune for intervals mistuned sharp, and voice was judged least in tune when intervals were in tune (relative to equal temperament). Differences in perception between timbres may be influenced by characteristics of the vibrato itself such as modulation width, rate, and type.

The impact of talker and prosodic variability on speech perception in noise for children with dyslexia.

This study investigated whether children with dyslexia (DYS) are more affected by talker and prosodic variability when perceiving speech in noise than age‐matched average readers (ARs). 34 DYS and 25 AR children carried out syllable‐initial consonant perception tests, with natural consonant‐vowel (CV) tokens in multi‐talker babble noise (0 dB signal‐to‐noise ratio). Twelve‐alternative identification tests were presented in four conditions varying in degree of talker and intonation variability. The discrimination of place (/bi‐di/) and voicing (/bi‐pi/) contrasts was investigated with the same test conditions. When identifying CV syllables in noise, the DYS group made more errors than the AR group, but only for conditions with variable intonation. This group difference was primarily due to poorer perception by DYS children of fricative voicing and greater /m/‐/n/ confusions, i.e., contrasts with less salient acoustic differences. DYS children showed lower discrimination scores than AR children for both the voicing and place contrasts, across the single/multiple talker and single/multiple intonation conditions. These results are compatible with the view that some children with dyslexia have speech perceptual acuity at the lower end of a normal range, which may be exacerbated by non‐sensory factors, and thus affected by the type of task used. [Work funded by the Wellcome Trust (076499/Z/05/Z)].

A hybrid scheme for bore design optimization of a brass instrument

This paper presents how the shape of a brass instrument can be optimized with respect to its intonation properties. The instrument is modeled using a hybrid method between a lossy one-dimensional transmission line analogy for the slowly flaring part of the instrument, and a two-dimensional finite element model for the rapidly flaring part. The optimization employs gradient-based algorithms, and allows for a large number of design variables. Through the use of an appropriate choice of design variables, the algorithm is capable of rapidly finding horn profiles that are optimal subject to various geometric constraints, such as increasing or convex bell flares. It is found that under a convexity constraint, brass wind bells that are optimal with respect to an intonation condition can be constructed of piecewise conical sections.

Common and distinct neural substrates for the perception of speech rhythm and intonation

The present study examines the neural substrates for the perception of speech rhythm and intonation. Subjects listened passively to synthesized speech stimuli that contained no semantic and phonological information, in three conditions: (1) continuous speech stimuli with fixed syllable duration and fundamental frequency in the standard condition, (2) stimuli with varying vocalic durations of syllables in the speech rhythm condition, and (3) stimuli with varying fundamental frequency in the intonation condition. Compared to the standard condition, speech rhythm activated the right middle superior temporal gyrus (mSTG), whereas intonation activated the bilateral superior temporal gyrus and sulcus (STG/STS) and the right posterior STS. Conjunction analysis further revealed that rhythm and intonation activated a common area in the right mSTG but compared to speech rhythm, intonation elicited additional activations in the right anterior STS. Findings from the current study reveal that the right mSTG plays an important role in prosodic processing. Implications of our findings are discussed with respect to neurocognitive theories of auditory processing.

Early cortical processing of linguistic pitch patterns as revealed by the mismatch negativity

Previous brain imaging studies have shown the left hemispheric dominance for processing of lexical tone in native speakers. However, the low temporal resolution related to neuroimaging techniques might not explicitly detect the brain activities that occur at a relatively small or a determined time frame. We used the mismatch negativity (MMN) and a source estimation technique (low-resolution electromagnetic tomography [LORETA]) to probe the brain activities underlying the early pre-attentive processing of Mandarin lexical tone and intonation. A passive oddball paradigm was applied to present tone and intonation contrast in a speech and nonspeech context. The results showed that no difference of the MMN amplitudes existed between speech and nonspeech conditions, although a larger MMN was found for tone than intonation condition. Source localization of the MMNs for all of the conditions showed the right hemispheric dominance, regardless of their linguistic functions (tone vs. intonation) or speech context (speech vs. nonspeech). Interestingly, the MMN generator for normal tone and hummed tone originated from the same cortical area (right parietal lobe, BA 19). These findings suggest that the pre-attentive cortical processing can be modulated not only by speech stimuli, but also by their nonspeech hums. Our data are compatible with the acoustic hypothesis of speech processing.

External factors impacting the performance of speaker identification: Multisession audio research project (MARP) corpus experiments

This study looks at the effect of data conditions on automated speech processing systems. The goal is to better understand the impact of acoustical features on accuracy and to develop more robust features. A speaker identification (SID) system was used for the experiments. To explore this issue, a new longitudinal database was collected involving 60 speakers over 18 months. This corpus allowed us to examine four data factors that impact SID: (1) intersession variability, (2) question intonation (3), text-dependency (identical phonetic content), and (4) whispered speech. First, we found that intersession SID suffered an average loss in accuracy of 17% independent of the time latency between sessions. Second, differing the intonation conditions in train and test hurt SID performance by 5%. Third, text-dependent data showed the most dramatic impact, where using phonetically-identical test and train sentences yielded 0% error. However, replacing the target speakers content with a random text-independent sentence, ceteris paribus, caused accuracy to plummet 94%. In all of the erroneous identifications, the top-ranked speaker was speaking the sentence used for the training model. Finally, when there was a mismatch between whispered speech being used in training and normally phonated speech in testing, the SID performance was severely impacted.

Absolute pitch and sex effect event-related potential activity for a melodic interval discrimination task.

Absolute pitch is a special ability which allows for special perceptual/cognitive strategies. Studies have shown differences in event-related scalp potentials between absolute-pitch (AP) and relative-pitch (RP) subjects of equal musical training. In this study, highly trained musicians (15 females/15 males) performed a melodic interval discrimination task, using intervals on-pitch in equal-tempered tuning (A4 = 440 Hz) and tuned a half-semitone sharp. Subjects identified target intervals (probability 0.2) in a series of 400 randomly transposed intervals. AP subjects were expected to perform differently across intonation conditions, whereas RP subjects were not. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from three midline sites and two lateral sites. ERPs were analyzed by principal component analysis of variance. Sex was also considered as an independent subject variable. Performance was not significantly different either by absolute pitch or sex. Reaction times did not reveal any significant interactions involving AP or sex, but showed a significant effect by response type (target/nontarget). Strong P3 activity appeared to the target melodic intervals regardless of subject group or intonation. PCA factors with maxima at 352, 511, and 709 ms were sensitive to task relevance. Males showed greater positivity than females along the midline. A significant intonation by response type by sex interaction indicated a greater spread of values for females than males, and greater similarity in response by sex for the sharp than the on-pitch intervals. AP subjects showed reduced P3 activity along the midline, but increased over lateral sites. In a difficult musical task, the ERPs were sensitive to the sex of the listeners, as well as to whether they had absolute pitch.

The Emotive Impact of Foreign Intonation: An Experiment in Switching English and Russian Intonation

This study explores subjects' responses in terms of emotion and attitude to native and foreign intonation patterns across four major sentence types. The goal of the experiment was to ascertain whether there would be a significant change in the judgment of a selection of ten emotions and attitudes with a change of intonation, while keeping other phonetic factors constant. Two languages and two groups of native speakers, English and Russian, were chosen for the experiments. The pattern of interactions from the analyses of variance for each of the ten measures indicates that English and Russian speaking subjects show a similar tripartite grouping of nine of the emotions/attitudes into Positive, Negative, and Passive types. One variable, namely SURPRISED, exhibits a different pattern of means between the two language groups. Within each emotion/attitude, sentence types are differentially rated for each level of intonation condition (native or foreign) in both Russian and English experiments. In general, English speakers are found to be more sensitive to foreign intonation. The most significant difference between intonations is recorded by English speakers' judgments of the Negative emotions/attitudes, with Russian intonation consistently rated as more Negative.

Processing strategies in the acquisition of relative clauses: Universal principles and language-specific realizations

In this study we present a cross-linguistic analysis of the strategies used by Korean, Japanese and English-speaking children in processing sentences with relative clauses. The results of an experiment on the comprehension of relative clauses in Korean are reported and compared with prior research on the acquisition of relative clauses in Japanese and English. In our experiment on Korean, 6-year-old children acted out sentences with left-branching and center-embedded relative clauses in two matrix word orders, SOV and OSV, and two intonation conditions, “clear” (syntactically motivated) and “list” intonation. The findings provide strong evidence for a basic left-to-right processing strategy and significant roles for a canonical sentence strategy and for a parallel function strategy in the comprehension of relative clauses in Korean. Intonation had a significant role as a parsing cue in center-embedded sentences; error analysis revealed the over-extension of strategies appropriate for processing simple and conjoined sentences. A rank ordering of sentence types based on the predictions of the available processing strategies was found to predict the obtained order of difficulty in comprehending sentences with relative clauses in Korean, Japanese, and English quite accurately. We propose that an adequate cross-linguistic account of relative clause comprehension must be based upon an integrated view of multiple universal processing strategies, whose application will depend upon language-specific structural properties of relative clauses and upon the developmental stage of the child.

Intonation and the perceptual separation of simultaneous voices

The present paper examines the role of speech pitch in the perceptual separation of simultaneous speech messages, when both messages are spoken by the same speaker and there are no differences in directional hearing. In a first experiment, employing resynthesized speech with completely monotonous pitch, it is shown that intelligibility of the target message can be manipulated by introducing an artificial constant difference in pitch between target speech and interfering speech. Within certain limits intelligibility increases with increasing difference in pitch. In a second experiment natural speech is employed for both target and interfering messages. The interfering speech is always spoken with normal intonation, whereas the target messages are either spoken with normal intonation or deliberately spoken in a monotone. For both intonation conditions the messages are either spoken within the same pitch range as the interfering speech (SAME PITCH), or within a considerably higher pitch range (DIFFERENT PITCH). For the messages spoken with normal intonation the SAME PITCH condition is considerably less intelligible than the DIFFERENT PITCH condition. For the monotonously spoken messages the results are less clear. Here the effect of a difference in pitch range is probably confounded with the effects of other properties of speech which result from a monotonous pronunciation. The main results of these experiments can be related to the phenomenon of “perceptual fusion”, occurring whenever two simultaneous sounds have identical pitches, and to “perceptual tracking”: whenever the pitches of target and interfering speech cross each other, the listener runs the risk of inadvertently switching his attention from the target speech to the interfering speech.