Language Intonation Research Articles

“The Eight Songs” by Zhao Jiping as the embodiment of the vocal and instrumental poem

“The Eight Songs” by Zhao Jiping as the embodiment of the vocal and instrumental poem

Alignment of f0 peak in different pitch accent types affects perception of metrical stress

In intonation languages, pitch accents are associated with stressed syllables, therefore accentuation is a sufficient cue to the position of metrical stress in perception. This paper investigates how stress perception in German is affected by different pitch accent types (with different f0 alignments). Experiment 1 showed more errors in stress identification when f0 peaks and stressed syllables were not aligned – despite phonological association of pitch accent and stressed syllable. Erroneous responses revealed a response bias towards the syllable with the f0 peak. In a visual-world eye-tracking study (Experiment 2), listeners fixated a stress competitor with initial stress more when the spoken target, which had penultimate stress, was realized with an early-peak accent (f0 peak preceding stressed syllable), compared to a condition with the f0 peak on the stressed syllable. Hence, high-pitched unstressed syllables are temporarily interpreted as stressed – a process directly affecting lexical activation. To investigate whether this stress competitor activation is guided by the frequent co-occurrence of high f0 and lexical stress, Experiment 3 increased the frequency of low-pitched stressed syllables in the immediate input. The effect of intonation on competitor fixations disappeared. Our findings are discussed with respect to a frequency-based mechanism and their implications for the nature of f0 processing.

Morphosyntactic encoding of information structure in Akan

This paper investigates the interpretive and formal properties of the so-called focus construction in Akan. It argues that Akan has only one true morphological focus marker, namely na, whereas the marker de(ε) that has been analysed in the linguistic literature on Akan as a focus marker (Boadi 1974; Saah 1988; Boadi 1990; Saah 1994; Marfo and Bodomo 2005) is in fact a marker of contrastive topic. The proposed analysis relies on the idea that the Akan morphological markers na and de(ε) carry out exactly the same interpretive function as the falling and rising prosodic markers, respectively, found in intonation languages. It is shown that a number of controversies associated with Akan information-structural marking can be accounted for by assuming a certain parallelism with intonation languages. It is demonstrated that particular types of information-structural partitioning are cross-linguistically encoded via a marked strategy, with the parametric variation resulting from the difference in the choice of the linguistic tool – syntactic, morphological or prosodic – used to create a marked representation.

A Review of Research into the Intonation of the Lithuanian Language

The article deals with the development of research into the intonation of the Lithuanian language, the methods employed, and the results achieved compared with the history of research of intonation of other languages. The beginning of research into the intonation of the Lithuanian language is recorded only at the beginning of the twentieth century in the works of the linguists Jonas Jablonskis (1911) and Mykolas Durys (1927). Substantial research into intonations of other European languages (English, Russia) was conducted in the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries (English: John Hart (1551) and Charles Butler (1634); Russian: Mikhail Lomonosov (1755). The beginning and the second half of the twentieth century, when the intonation of the Lithuanian language was studied by Lithuanian linguists syntacticians and phoneticians, was the most productive research period. A considerable amount of research was carried out using the methods of experimental phonetics. It resulted in the development of terminology of Lithuanian intonation, the establishment of its functions and of the main phonetic features. The key authors: syntactician Jonas Balkevičius (1963, 1998), phoneticians Vincas Pukelis (1972) and Petronėlė Bikulčienė (1976), Antanas Pakerys (2003), Aleksas Girdenis (1980; 2003). A variant of the Lithuanian language intonation system inventory is presented in the works of Gintautas Kundrotas (2004, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2012). It was found that the intonation system of the Lithuanian language consists of four elements: (1) a subsystem of seven units of intonation types; (2) a shift of intonation centre (marking of intonation centre); (3) syntagmatic spread, and (4) the pause as an additional element within the syntagma. The intonation system is a constituent part of phonetic (phonological) means of the whole language.

Whose Speech Is It Anyway? Ownership, Authorship, and the Redfern Address

Whose Speech Is It Anyway? Ownership, Authorship, and the Redfern Address

On the phrase-level function of f0 in Estonian

In intonation languages, prominence-lending pitch movements are frequently aligned with sentence focus. In some free word order languages f0 may act as an acoustic correlate of focus together with focus-sensitive variation in word order. With respect to Estonian, a flexible word order language, this raises the question of how word order, which is sensitive to focus structure, interacts with intonation. This study explored how focus and word positioning affect f0 via a production experiment involving elicitation of laboratory speech. The results showed that independently of word order, the focal word was aligned with prominence-lending f0 movement, thus demonstrating that in Estonian narrow focus is related to f0, as is typical in intonation languages.

The Effect of Focus and Phrase Position on East Norwegian Lexical Tonal Accents

Two experiments examined the acoustic correlates of the disyllabic tonal accent contrast in the Trøndersk dialect of Norwegian, and how narrow focus and phrasal position shape the contrast. Production results showed that both tonal accents have a high-low (HL) pitch contour, with different timing. In narrow focus, the pitch contrast was enlarged through asymmetrical F0 changes. When at the right edge of an accent phrase (AP), the accents were shown to have a higher L, lower AP H% tone, shorter stressed vowel, and longer final vowel. The alignment changes reflected tonal crowding while segmental modifications were due to the phrase-final lengthening in AP-final position. This work contributes to the literature on prosodic typology as well as on the implementation of prosodic focus and sentence intonation in languages with lexical pitch contrasts.

ТЕОРЕТИЧЕСКИЕ ОСНОВЫ ИЗУЧЕНИЯ ЭМОТИВНОЙ ФУНКЦИИ ИНТОНАЦИИ

The current paper focuses on responses to major questions that determine the correctness of researching the emotive function of intonation: 1) the problem of classifying emotions; 2) universal / idioethnic nature of expressing emotions by means of intonation; 3) intonation pattern structure significant for adequate description of intonation emotive types; 4) the place of emotive intonation patterns in language intonation system; 5) variety of emotive intonation patterns; 6) methods of planning experiments for studying emotive intonation.

Prosody instruction: intonation challenges for of EFL pre-service teachers

Much research stresses the importance of English as a Foreign Language intonation instruction for the accuracy of speech. This study aimed at (1) Exploring the meaning of intonation, verifying whether or not there was a global problem in English as a Foreign Language intonation instruction (i.e. a phenomenon), and providing strategies for intervention, based on literature review, (2) Assessing the status quo relating to the instruction of intonation to English as a Foreign Language pre-service teachers in Egypt, e.g. in regard to intonation meaning, patterns, use, and problematic areas, and (3) Investigating pre-service teachers’ expectations behind intonation learning. The sample consisted of 64 pre-service teachers enrolled at the College of Education in Ismailia, Suez Canal University. The tools used to attain the aim of the study were (1) an interview with the pre-service teachers addressing the examinees’ intonation instruction status quo and (2) an intonation recorded oral test verifying the examinees’ intonation patterns. Results indicated that, to the majority of the examinees, the term was inaccurate and vague; most intonation patterns, except the ‘Fall’ one, were not identified; and intonation was not used in their speech. Also, they had misconception about the intonation term. It was then concluded they further lacked focused instruction regarding intonation. This reflected a need for re-consideration for their preparation.

Communicative aspects of the modern Russian language intonation in Russian Practice course (B2–C2)

Communicative aspects of the modern Russian language intonation in Russian Practice course (B2–C2)

Sociolinguistic Perspective on Teaching English Intonation for Adult Learners

In this paper, we aim at identifying the efficiency of teaching English intonation at the university level. We show how sociolinguistic approach with the focus on conscious control of using intonation can enhance the communicative performance of linguistic students at Novosibirsk State Technical University. We present a teaching model based on appealing to senses, on making students’ egos more permeable and on creating favorable socio- and psychological conditions conducive to the acquisition of the second language intonation. Finally, we make some suggestions on how to integrate cognitive, emotional and psychological perspectives in the language learning process.

Intonational variation and change in Scottish Gaelic

This paper investigates intonational variation and change in Scottish Gaelic (henceforth ‘Gaelic’), a minority endangered language undergoing revitalisation. In particular I focus on bilingual speakers aged 13–14 who are attending immersion education in the Isle of Lewis, a Gaelic-heartland area, and in the city of Glasgow where Gaelic has no community history. The young people are compared to older Gaelic-dominant speakers in Lewis. Results suggest a substantial difference in Gaelic prosodic structure between the older and younger speakers, with older speakers speaking Gaelic as a language with contrastive word accents (prosodically similar to Swedish), and young people speaking Gaelic as an intonation language (prosodically similar to English). Further analysis of the young people's intonation suggests cross-language influence from Glaswegian English on the realisation of pitch accents and boundary tones in Glasgow Gaelic. These results are discussed in terms of the impact of language contact and bilingualism on intonational structure, and language change in this context of minority language revitalisation.

The role of intonation in language and dialect discrimination by adults

It has been widely shown that adults are capable of using only prosodic cues to discriminate between languages. Previous research has focused largely on how one aspect of prosody – rhythmic timing differences – support language discrimination. In this paper, we examined whether listeners attend to pitch cues for language discrimination. First, we acoustically analyzed American English and German, and American and Australian English to demonstrate that these pairs are distinguishable using either rhythmic timing or pitch information alone. Then, American English listeners' ability to discriminate prosodically-similar languages was examined using (1) low-pass filtered, (2) monotone re-synthesized speech, containing only rhythmic timing information, and (3) re-synthesized intonation-only speech. Results showed that listeners are capable of using only pitch cues to discriminate between American English and German. Additionally, although listeners are unable to use pitch cues alone to discriminate between American and Australian English, their classification of the two dialects is improved by the addition of pitch cues to rhythmic timing cues. Thus, the role of intonation cannot be ignored as a possible cue to language discrimination.

Question or tone 2? How language experience and linguistic function guide pitch processing

How does language experience shape pitch processing? Do speakers of tone languages, which use pitch to signal lexical contrasts (e.g., Mandarin Chinese) attend to pitch movements more closely than speakers of intonation languages (e.g., Dutch)? Contradictory findings have been reported in the literature. In the current study, we hypothesize that listeners should be particularly attentive to any pitch information that signals meaningful information in the native language. This includes pitch movements signaling lexical contrasts (present in tone languages only) as well as postlexical contrasts (present in all languages). Both Mandarin and Dutch listeners performed speeded ABX match to sample tasks on the same sets of nonsense words. As predicted, the same pitch movements were attended to differentially by the two language populations depending on the role that information played in the native language. Mandarin listeners were more attentive than Dutch listeners to pitch movements as these signaled potential lexical contrasts in Mandarin (but not Dutch). Importantly, Dutch listeners were more attentive to pitch movements signaling postlexical information than to pitch movements signaling no meaningful linguistic information. These findings underscore the importance of postlexical information in online speech processing and explain apparent contradictions in the literature.

Prosodic Impairment in Alzheimer's Disease: Assessment and Clinical Relevance

Prosodic Impairment in Alzheimer's Disease: Assessment and Clinical Relevance

The grammatical expression of focus in West Chadic: Variation and uniformity in and across languages

The article provides an overview of the grammatical realization of focus in four West Chadic languages (Chadic, Afro-Asiatic). The languages discussed exhibit an intriguing crosslinguistic variation in the realization of focus, both among themselves as well as compared to European intonation languages. They also display language-internal variation in the formal realization of focus. The West Chadic languages differ widely in their ways of expressing focus, which range from syntactic over prosodic to morphological devices. In contrast to European intonation languages, the focus marking systems of the West Chadic languages are inconsistent in that focus is often not grammatically expressed, but these inconsistencies are shown to be systematic. Subject foci (contrastive or not) and contrastive nonsubject foci are always grammatically marked, whereas information focus on nonsubjects need not be marked as such. The absence of formal focus marking supports pragmatic theories of focus in terms of contextual resolution. The special status of focused subjects and contrastive foci is derived from the Contrastive Focus Hypothesis, which requires unexpected foci and unexpected focus contents to be marked as such, together with the assumption that canonical subjects in West Chadic receive a default interpretation as topics. Finally, I discuss certain focus ambiguities which are not attested in intonation languages, nor do they follow on standard accounts of focus marking, but which can be accounted for in terms of constraint interaction in the formal expression of focus.

Prosody and Syntax in Sign Languages.

Prosody and Syntax in Sign Languages.

Hierarchical prosodic structures in the intonation of center-embedded relative clauses

There is no doubt that recursion exists in syntax, but whether this is reflected in prosody is still an open question. In this paper, the prosody of sentences with syntactically recursive center-embedded clauses is examined empirically in two languages. On the basis of the results, we argue for recursion of higher prosodic domains in German. Evidence for this proposal comes from the F0 range of the matrix clause, which is larger if embedded material is present. It is both higher in the high regions and lower in the low regions than in matrix clauses without embedded material. A second piece of evidence relates to pitch scaling of high tones at the boundaries between clauses, which is sensitive to syntactic embedding. In Hindi, by contrast, no evidence for embedding of prosodic phrases could be found. Prosodic phrases are concatenated and are in a downstep relationship to each other, regardless of the syntactic structure of the sentence. The difference between the prosodic structure of German and Hindi is tentatively explained by their different intonational properties: German is an intonation language with lexical stress and Hindi is a phrase language without lexical stress, in which tonal structures are phrase-based.

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.

Revisiting English prosody

Many New Englishes are spoken in what can often be considered multilingual contexts in which typologically diverse languages come into contact. In several Asian contexts, one typological feature that is prominent in the multilingual contact situation (the “ecology”) is tone. Given that tone is recognized as an areal feature and is acquired easily by languages in contact, the question that arises is how this is manifested in the prosody of these New Englishes. Recent work has shown that contact languages, including English varieties, evolving in an ecology where tone languages are present do indeed combine aspects of tone languages. This paper attempts to go a step further, in suggesting not only that such varieties should not be viewed as aberrant in comparison to “standard” English but recognized as having their own prosodic system partly due to substrate typology, but also that in the consideration of New Englishes — here, Asian (but also African) Englishes — the traditional view of English as a stress / intonation language need to be revisited and revised, to consider some New Englishes as tone languages. Singapore English (SgE) is presented as a case in point, with the presence of tone demonstrated in the set of SgE particles acquired from Cantonese, at the level of the word, as well as in the intonation contour which moves in a series of level steps. A comparison is then made with Hong Kong English, another New English in a tone-language-dominant ecology, with a consideration of typological comparability as well as difference due to the dynamic nature of SgE’s ecology.