Speech Melody Research Articles

Eros, Beauty, and Phon-Aesthetic Judgements of Language Sound. We Like It Flat and Fast, but Not Melodious. Comparing Phonetic and Acoustic Features of 16 European Languages.

This article concerns sound aesthetic preferences for European foreign languages. We investigated the phonetic-acoustic dimension of the linguistic aesthetic pleasure to describe the “music” found in European languages. The Romance languages, French, Italian, and Spanish, take a lead when people talk about melodious language – the music-like effects in the language (a.k.a., phonetic chill). On the other end of the melodiousness spectrum are German and Arabic that are often considered sounding harsh and un-attractive. Despite the public interest, limited research has been conducted on the topic of phonaesthetics, i.e., the subfield of phonetics that is concerned with the aesthetic properties of speech sounds (Crystal, 2008). Our goal is to fill the existing research gap by identifying the acoustic features that drive the auditory perception of language sound beauty. What is so music-like in the language that makes people say “it is music in my ears”? We had 45 central European participants listening to 16 auditorily presented European languages and rating each language in terms of 22 binary characteristics (e.g., beautiful – ugly and funny – boring) plus indicating their language familiarities, L2 backgrounds, speaker voice liking, demographics, and musicality levels. Findings revealed that all factors in complex interplay explain a certain percentage of variance: familiarity and expertise in foreign languages, speaker voice characteristics, phonetic complexity, musical acoustic properties, and finally musical expertise of the listener. The most important discovery was the trade-off between speech tempo and so-called linguistic melody (pitch variance): the faster the language, the flatter/more atonal it is in terms of the pitch (speech melody), making it highly appealing acoustically (sounding beautiful and sexy), but not so melodious in a “musical” sense.

Melody complexity of infants\u2019 cry and non-cry vocalisations increases across the first six months

In early infancy, melody provides the most salient prosodic element for language acquisition and there is huge evidence for infants’ precocious aptitudes for musical and speech melody perception. Yet, a lack of knowledge remains with respect to melody patterns of infants’ vocalisations. In a search for developmental regularities of cry and non-cry vocalisations and for building blocks of prosody (intonation) over the first 6 months of life, more than 67,500 melodies (fundamental frequency contours) of 277 healthy infants from monolingual German families were quantitatively analysed. Based on objective criteria, vocalisations with well-identifiable melodies were grouped into those exhibiting a simple (single-arc) or complex (multiple-arc) melody pattern. Longitudinal analysis using fractional polynomial multi-level mixed effects logistic regression models were applied to these patterns. A significant age (but not sex) dependent developmental pattern towards more complexity was demonstrated in both vocalisation types over the observation period. The theoretical concept of melody development (MD-Model) contends that melody complexification is an important building block on the path towards language. Recognition of this developmental process will considerably improve not only our understanding of early preparatory processes for language acquisition, but most importantly also allow for the creation of clinically robust risk markers for developmental language disorders.

How Money Talks: Speech Melody and Venture Evaluation

Investors rely on a wide range of signals to assess ventures. This paper investigates how the tone and sound of a speaker's voice (pitch level, melodic variability, speech tempo, and others) affect venture evaluation. Through an exploratory quantitative approach in three consecutive studies, we investigate the effect of speech-melody on venture funding. In study 1, we use 175 pitches from TechCrunch events to explore in the field which aspects of a speaker's voice affect funding likelihood and amount. In study 2a, we replicate our findings in an online vignette experiment in which 256 participants evaluate six venture ideas spoken by six different speakers (1,356 evaluations). Across both studies, we find that the speakers' pitch level and variability and their projected body size (smallness) significantly affect funding. In study 2b, we build on the vignette experiment's data and investigate potential mechanisms that drive our findings, specifically passion/preparedness, competence/warmth, and charisma. Charisma is the mediator which best explains our results.

A meta-analysis of prosody in autism, Williams syndrome, and Down syndrome

Prosody, the rhythm and melody of speech, is an important component of effective communication, and it is an area of difficulty for many populations who struggle with communication. This paper is a meta-analysis of nine studies (and two sets of unpublished data) that assessed prosody using the Profiling Elements of Prosody in Speech-Communication (PEPS-C; Peppé & McCann, 2003) in autism spectrum disorder, Williams syndrome, and Down syndrome. Our original goal was to include studies involving any neurodevelopmental disorder that is commonly associated with intellectual disability, yet our systematic search, which included three databases (i.e., PsychInfo, ERIC, and PubMed), only identified studies involving these three groups. To be included in the meta-analysis, studies had to include a group (n ≥ 3 participants) with a neurodevelopmental disorder commonly associated with intellectual disability and a typically developing comparison group matched on chronological age, nonverbal abilities, or verbal abilities. Studies also needed to report original data using the PEPS-C and be available in English. Study quality was assessed using a checklist adapted from Downes et al. (2016). Results revealed that prosodic form was a weakness for each etiology, while unique patterns of strengths and weaknesses were evident for prosodic functions. Groups with autism (n = 5), all classified as high-functioning or with Asperger’s syndrome, exhibited weakness in emotional affect but some relative strengths with turn-end and focus tasks. Groups with Williams syndrome (n = 4) demonstrated weaknesses on phrase/sentence-level tasks and relative strengths on word-level tasks. Groups with Down syndrome (n = 2) had the greatest difficulty overall, though performance was better on receptive (vs. expressive) function tasks. By combining studies and related subtasks of the PEPS-C, we are able to more confidently generalize findings for each population and identify targets for intervention. However, given the limited number of studies identified, this paper also highlights the need for more research on prosody in intellectual disability.

التقابل اللغوى وتحليل الأخطاء في اللغة العربية

Error analysis is an analytical study of linguistic errors committed by an individual or group of individuals during the production of the first second language in speech or book. This analysis is concerned with classifying errors from two aspects: linguistic classification, such as grammatical errors, spelling, writing, or semantics. The Sinaitic classification is a mistake due to the first language to the second language, or a coincidental error. Error analysis focuses on the target language, it is known that there is a difference between languages in several areas and from structures, book and sound. This difference causes problems for students in learning the target language and makes mistakes in some areas, and the analysis reveals all the errors found. Grammatical errors include phonemes, morphology, and grammar, and the results of the book research indicated that grammatical errors are more frequent when a foreign language learner in the process of linguistic skill, and because one of the goals of teaching grammar rules in education stages is to establish the tongue and reduce melody in speech, the learner reads, speaks, or books He did not raise up, nor did he shorten erect.

Development of a Digital Content-Free Speech Analysis Tool for the Measurement of Mental Health and Follow-Up for Mental Disorders: Protocol for a Case-Control Study

BackgroundThe prevalence of mental disorders worldwide is very high. The guideline-oriented care of patients depends on early diagnosis and regular and valid evaluation of their treatment to be able to quickly intervene should the patient’s mental health deteriorate. To ensure effective treatment, the level of experience of the physician or therapist is of importance, both in the initial diagnosis and in the treatment of mental illnesses. Nevertheless, experienced physicians and psychotherapists are not available in enough numbers everywhere, especially in rural areas or in less developed countries. Human speech can reveal a speaker’s mental state by altering its noncontent aspects (speech melody, intonations, speech rate, etc). This is noticeable in both the clinic and everyday life by having prior knowledge of the normal speech patterns of the affected person, and with enough time spent listening to the patient. However, this time and experience are often unavailable, leaving unused opportunities to capture linguistic, noncontent information. To improve the care of patients with mental disorders, we have developed a concept for assessing their most important mental parameters through a noncontent analysis of their active speech. Using speech analysis for the assessment and tracking of mental health patients opens up the possibility of remote, automatic, and ongoing evaluation when used with patients’ smartphones, as part of the current trends toward the increasing use of digital and mobile health tools.ObjectiveThe primary objective of this study is to evaluate measurements of participants' mental state by comparing the analysis of noncontent speech parameters to the results of several psychological questionnaires (Symptom Checklist-90 [SCL-90], the Patient Health Questionnaire [PHQ], and the Big 5 Test).MethodsIn this paper, we described a case-controlled study (with a case group and one control group). The participants will be recruited in an outpatient neuropsychiatric treatment center. Inclusion criteria are a neurological or psychiatric diagnosis made by a specialist, no terminal or life-threatening illnesses, and fluent use of the German language. Exclusion criteria include psychosis, dementia, speech or language disorders in neurological diseases, addiction history, a suicide attempt recently or in the last 12 months, or insufficient language skills. The measuring instrument will be the VoiceSense digital voice analysis tool, which enables the analysis of 200 specific speech parameters, and the assessment of findings using psychometric instruments and questionnaires (SCL-90, PHQ, Big 5 Test).ResultsThe study is ongoing as of September 2019, but we have enrolled 254 participants. There have been 161 measurements completed at timepoint 1, and a total of 62 participants have completed every psychological and speech analysis measurement.ConclusionsIt appears that the tone and modulation of speech are as important, if not more so, than the content, and should not be underestimated. This is particularly evident in the interpretation of the psychological findings thus far acquired. Therefore, the application of a software analysis tool could increase the accuracy of finding assessments and improve patient care.Trial RegistrationClinicalTrials.gov NCT03700008; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03700008International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID)PRR1-10.2196/13852

Анализ мелодико-интонационной структуры стихотворения И.А. Бродского «Почти элегия» в 11 классе

The article aims to describe a lesson that represents one of the stages of studying the melodic-intonation structure of poems by I.A. Brodsky in high school. The creation of this method is due to the need to develop an integral concept of school study of poetry, the individual features of which are largely determined by the special sound of the lyricism of the poet’s philosophy-centered creativity. The concept is based on the structural and interdisciplinary approaches to the poetry evaluation, as well as on the works of scholars and teachers who have systematized the experience of studying lyric poetry by schoolchildren, including the sound side of the poetic speech. The analysis of the works of researchers who study the phenomena of melody and intonation of the poetic speech, has aimed at the need to form a multidimensional understanding of I.A. Brodsky’s lyric poetry by schoolchildren. The concept has been developed on the basis of the theoretical, socio-pedagogical and experimental research methods, which allowed to conduct diagnosing, training and control experiments, which revealed an increase in the level of students’ interpretative competence. The step-by-step study of I.A. Brodsky’s poetry in the 11th grade involves schoolchildren’s moving from the intuitive perception of the author’s style to mastering the skills of independent intonation interpretation of the poet’s works, which are based on the ability to isolate the elements from the text of the poem that create its intonation and determine their semantic function. The described lesson implements the second part of the stage of the intuitive perception of I.A. Brodsky’s poetry when the transition is made from an elemental acquaintance with the sound of the poet’s work to clarifying the features of the sound of a particular poem and forming students’ deeper awareness of the correlation between the intonation and ideological interpretations of the poetic work.

Speech Melody Matters—How Robots Profit from Using Charismatic Speech

In this article, we address to what extent the proverb “the sound makes the music” also applies to human-robot interaction, and whether robots could profit from using speech characteristics similar to those used by charismatic speakers like Steve Jobs. In three empirical studies, we investigate the effects of using Steve Jobs’ and Mark Zuckerberg's speech characteristics during the generation of robot speech on the robot's persuasiveness and its impressionistic evaluation. The three studies address different human-robot interaction situations, which range from online questionnaires to real-time interactions with a large service robot, yet all involve both behavioral measures and users’ assessments. The results clearly show that robots can profit from using charismatic speech.

Le lyrisme du détail dans The Cave de Steve Reich et Beryl Korot

In The Cave, the first of their two stage works, composer Steve Reich and video artist Beryl Korot attempt to shed new light, via an innovative multimedia installation, on the relationship between words and music, a central concern in opera. While Reich appropriates speech melodies for musical purposes, Korot focuses on the graphic properties of alphabetic writing; both pay close attention to details of typography or intonation, which leads them to explore new modes of lyricism arising not from the characters’ subjective responses to the plot, but from the experience of language as such.

Is It Speech or Song? Effect of Melody Priming on Pitch Perception of Modified Mandarin Speech.

Tonal languages make use of pitch variation for distinguishing lexical semantics, and their melodic richness seems comparable to that of music. The present study investigated a novel priming effect of melody on the pitch processing of Mandarin speech. When a spoken Mandarin utterance is preceded by a musical melody, which mimics the melody of the utterance, the listener is likely to perceive this utterance as song. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine the neural substrates of this speech-to-song transformation. Pitch contours of spoken utterances were modified so that these utterances can be perceived as either speech or song. When modified speech (target) was preceded by a musical melody (prime) that mimics the speech melody, a task of judging the melodic similarity between the target and prime was associated with increased activity in the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and superior/middle temporal gyrus (STG/MTG) during target perception. We suggest that the pars triangularis of the right IFG may allocate attentional resources to the multi-modal processing of speech melody, and the STG/MTG may integrate the phonological and musical (melodic) information of this stimulus. These results are discussed in relation to subvocal rehearsal, a speech-to-song illusion, and song perception.

NATIONAL SPECIFIC CHARACTERISTICS OF CANADIAN ENGLISH

The recognition of the Canadian language standard means that in Canada, continuous historical interaction of the British and American English standards brought about a special norm which is no longer British or American. The distinguishing features of Canadian prosodic rules serve as the evidence for divergent characteristics of the Canadian linguistic standard in the paradigm of the national variations of the multinational English language. Therefore, Canadian English is an amalgam of American, British, and Canadian English. It includes the literary norm of its own, based on the local linguistic norm, distributed through the system of education and media in the Canadian areas, where the local speech distinctiveness is particularly pronounced and is close to the dialect status.The body of the experimental material, arising from the research aim and the tasks, included 20 episodes of speech from representatives of 4 Canadian areas: provinces Ontario, British Columbia, the Islands of Newfoundland and Labrador, Island of Prince Edward. All experimental texts are quasi-spontaneous monologues of improvised, informal, and laidback nature. These characteristics of a communicative act are the key extralingual factors to feature colloquial speech. This gives the groundings to study these monologue texts as samples of natural colloquial informal speech. The perceptive and instrumental analysis revealed the key speech units of the speech melodies (scales and terminal tones), common and distinguishing features of speech prosody as well as frequent speech parameters, taking into consideration gender and territorial belonging of the Canadians. The bilingual situation in the country, influence of British and American English on Canadians’ pronunciation resulted in emerging of a distinguishing Canadian English with its peculiarities at the prosodic level of the phonological system. The divergent features of Canadian English are associated with re-distribution of functions of American and British prosodic parameters with a due consideration of the new language system requirements, revealed at the prosodic level as a high frequency of descending stepping and level types of scale, ascending and fall-rising terminal tone within the variable nature of basic frequency. The specific national features of the prosodic system of Canadian English is the high frequency of descending and level stepping scales.

Використання мелодекламації для розвитку творчих здібностей дітей дошкільного віку

The article substantiates the use of group melodeclamation for the development of creative abilities of children of preschool age. The interpretation of the concept of melodeclamation, as well as the conditionality of melodeclamation, expressiveness of speech and artistic word is revealed. It highlights the meaning of the gesture for the development of expressive pronunciation and the advantages of group verse reading. We consider the forms of interaction between the leader and the children in the classroom. The main tasks are indicated when working on melodeclamation: expanding the range of voices, improving articulation, forming an answer to the conductor's gesture, mastering the technique of interpretation. Extension of the range of voice involves the use of artistic tactics, which is accompanied by the pronunciation of words at different altitudes. This principle is used in the technique of melodeclamation. Improvement of articulation is carried out when working on an algorithm and artistic tactics. The formation of the echo of the conductor's gesture is due to the task for children to repeat the gestures of the teacher in the process of melodeclamation. In the gestures shows the height of speech, dynamics, speech stroke, metric features and tempo. Learning the technique of interpretation is an obligatory part of the work on the quality of melodeclamation. The teacher constantly asks to change the nature, to read the poem in a different way. In doing so, he gives different examples of interpretation. In this way, he induces the mastery of the technique of children's improvisation throughout the course of study. Improvisation has a collective character, so every child can participate in it. Availability of improvisation is a prerequisite for the development of the creative potential of children. They have the opportunity to reveal their abilities. The role of understanding the artistic image to work on technical skills is revealed. The main goals are identified, namely, the development of expressiveness of speech technology, as well as such tasks as changing the direction of the melody of speech, correct articulation of vowels and consonants, forming the ability to play strong and weak parts, mastering dynamics and strokes, translating the originality of drama, mastering the plasticity of gesture voice shaping. Keywords: melodeclamation, group reading, expressiveness of speech, articulation, gesture.

Intonation of Different Types of Statements in English and Chinese

The article has identified the intonation design of different statement types in the Chinese and English languages. Comparative analysis has revealed the presence of both similar and distinctive characteristics in the intonation design of different sentences types in the Chinese and English languages. Prosodic means of contacting languages are considered not only from the point of view of semanticdistinctive tones of a syllable, but also from the point of view of their communicative orientation. Key words: intonation, prosodic means, speech melody, register, stress, rhythm, pausing, tempo.

Prosody and Function Words Cue the Acquisition of Word Meanings in 18-Month-Old Infants

Language acquisition presents a formidable task for infants, for whom word learning is a crucial yet challenging step. Syntax (the rules for combining words into sentences) has been robustly shown to be a cue to word meaning. But how can infants access syntactic information when they are still acquiring the meanings of words? We investigated the contribution of two cues that may help infants break into the syntax and give a boost to their lexical acquisition: phrasal prosody (speech melody) and function words, both of which are accessible early in life and correlate with syntactic structure in the world’s languages. We show that 18-month-old infants use prosody and function words to recover sentences’ syntactic structure, which in turn constrains the possible meanings of novel words: Participants (N = 48 in each of two experiments) interpreted a novel word as referring to either an object or an action, given its position within the prosodic-syntactic structure of sentences.

Poetic speech melody: A crucial link between music and language.

Research on the music-language interface has extensively investigated similarities and differences of poetic and musical meter, but largely disregarded melody. Using a measure of melodic structure in music––autocorrelations of sound sequences consisting of discrete pitch and duration values––, we show that individual poems feature distinct and text-driven pitch and duration contours, just like songs and other pieces of music. We conceptualize these recurrent melodic contours as an additional, hitherto unnoticed dimension of parallelistic patterning. Poetic speech melodies are higher order units beyond the level of individual syntactic phrases, and also beyond the levels of individual sentences and verse lines. Importantly, auto-correlation scores for pitch and duration recurrences across stanzas are predictive of how melodious naive listeners perceive the respective poems to be, and how likely these poems were to be set to music by professional composers. Experimentally removing classical parallelistic features characteristic of prototypical poems (rhyme, meter, and others) led to decreased autocorrelation scores of pitches, independent of spoken renditions, along with reduced ratings for perceived melodiousness. This suggests that the higher order parallelistic feature of poetic melody strongly interacts with the other parallelistic patterns of poems. Our discovery of a genuine poetic speech melody has great potential for deepening the understanding of the music-language interface.

Вопросы формирования просодической компетенции на занятиях по практике устного перевода

Nowadays, highly qualified interpreters play a crucial role in different areas of the global world. Level of competencies, both personal and professional, defines excellence or level of professional qualification of an interpreter. Communicative skills of a qualified interpreter should include prosodic competency among the others. It assumes not only skills in reproducing phonemes and allophones, defining intonation, pauses, and speech tempo of a speaker but also abilities to interpret and render subtle nuances of a meaning with the help of proper intonation, speech tempo, pauses, and logical stress while interpreting to a target language. The study deals with the role of prosodic elements such as speech melody, tempo, rhythm, stress, and pausation. The importance of these elements for an interpreting activity is determined by the fact that a significant piece of information is transferred by prosodic elements and non-verbal means of communication. Therefore, it is reasonable to pay greater attention to the development of prosodic competency in interpreting practice classes. It can be achieved through a) special exercises that allow the students to learn and practise different phonetic styles both in native and foreign languages; b) providing students with knowledge of prosodic characteristics of emotions followed by their practical identification in the original speech and the search for the target-language equivalent for proper interpretation. In this regard, the author developed a set of special exercises and reading material. The study provided examples of the above-mentioned exercises and their in-class application methods. In conclusion, the research noted that the exercises designed to develop prosodic competency boosted the interpreting skills of students at the end of the semester.

OBSERVING AND PRODUCING PITCH GESTURES FACILITATES THE LEARNING OF MANDARIN CHINESE TONES AND WORDS

AbstractThis study investigates the perception and production of a specific type of metaphoric gesture that mimics melody in speech, also calledpitch gesture, in the learning of L2 suprasegmental features. In a between-subjects design, a total of 106 participants with no previous knowledge of Chinese were asked to observe (Experiment 1) and produce (Experiment 2) pitch gestures during a short multimodal training session on Chinese tones and words. In both experiments they were tested on (a) tone identification and (b) word learning. Results showed the positive effect of a training session with pitch gesture observation compared to a training session without it (Experiment 1) and the benefits of producing gestures compared to only observing them and repeating the words aloud (Experiment 2). A comparison of the results of the two experiments revealed that there was no significant difference between the simple observation of pitch gestures and the production of speech accompanied by pitch gestures in facilitating lexical tone identification and word learning. Thus, both perception and production tasks with pitch gestures can be regarded as beneficial learning strategies for the initial stages of tones acquisition in the Chinese as a Second Language classroom.

Neural correlates of processing emotional prosody in unipolar depression.

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is characterized by a biased emotion perception. In the auditory domain, MDD patients have been shown to exhibit attenuated processing of positive emotions expressed by speech melody (prosody). So far, no neuroimaging studies examining the neural basis of altered processing of emotional prosody in MDD are available. In this study, we addressed this issue by examining the emotion bias in MDD during evaluation of happy, neutral, and angry prosodic stimuli on a five-point Likert scale during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). As expected, MDD patients rated happy prosody less intense than healthy controls (HC). At neural level, stronger activation in the middle superior temporal gyrus (STG) and the amygdala was found in all participants when processing emotional as compared to neutral prosody. MDD patients exhibited an increased activation of the amygdala during processing prosody irrespective of valence while no significant differences between groups were found for the STG, indicating that altered processing of prosodic emotions in MDD occurs rather within the amygdala than in auditory areas. Concurring with the valence-specific behavioral effect of attenuated evaluation of positive prosodic stimuli, activation within the left amygdala of MDD patients correlated with ratings of happy, but not neutral or angry prosody. Our study provides first insights in the neural basis of reduced experience of positive information and an abnormally increased amygdala activity during prosody processing.

T93. Neurobiology of Processing Emotional Prosody in Unipolar Depression

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is characterized by a biased emotion perception. In the auditory domain, MDD patients have been shown to exhibit attenuated processing of positive emotions expressed by speech melody (i.e. prosody). So far, no neuroimaging studies examining the neural basis of altered processing of emotional prosody in MDD are available.

A Musical Approach to Speech Melody.

We present here a musical approach to speech melody, one that takes advantage of the intervallic precision made possible with musical notation. Current phonetic and phonological approaches to speech melody either assign localized pitch targets that impoverish the acoustic details of the pitch contours and/or merely highlight a few salient points of pitch change, ignoring all the rest of the syllables. We present here an alternative model using musical notation, which has the advantage of representing the pitch of all syllables in a sentence as well as permitting a specification of the intervallic excursions among syllables and the potential for group averaging of pitch use across speakers. We tested the validity of this approach by recording native speakers of Canadian English reading unfamiliar test items aloud, spanning from single words to full sentences containing multiple intonational phrases. The fundamental-frequency trajectories of the recorded items were converted from hertz into semitones, averaged across speakers, and transcribed into musical scores of relative pitch. Doing so allowed us to quantify local and global pitch-changes associated with declarative, imperative, and interrogative sentences, and to explore the melodic dynamics of these sentence types. Our basic observation is that speech is atonal. The use of a musical score ultimately has the potential to combine speech rhythm and melody into a unified representation of speech prosody, an important analytical feature that is not found in any current linguistic approach to prosody.