Intonation Model Research Articles

Intonation Analysis of the Self/Other Representation in Bush’s Speech

Intonation is one of the most important suprasegmental features, which conveys communicative strategies in political language. It is essential in reflecting the implicit meaning since it shows the movement of pitch or patterns of melody as well as the multiple movements used by people’s voice in speech .This study fills the gap in a literature as it aims to investigate the types of information tones used in shaping the discursive strategies of other/self in Bush’s speech after September 11 attacks based on an eclectic model of Van Dijk's (2006) model of ideological square and Brazil’s (1997) model of discourse intonation. The data is collected qualitatively and a mixed method is used to analyze the results of this study. The major findings show that Bush used commonly the proclaiming with a (fall) tone in shaping many discursive strategies to represent the image of “US” (selves) positively than the image of “THEM” (others) negatively in order to add more and new information and attract the attention of Americans and manipulate and motivate them against terrorists, particularly Muslim people. It is hoped that such a study helps to enhance learners’ understanding of speakers’ intended meaning, since it focuses on showing the tonal types of the social and cognitive traits of the politician in question.

Classical guitar intonation and compensation: The well-tempered guitar.

An intuitive model of classical guitar intonation is presented that includes the effects of the resonant length of the fretted string, linear mass density, tension, and bending stiffness. An expression is derived for the vibration frequencies of a stiff string using asymmetric boundary conditions at the saddle and the fret. Based on logarithmic frequency differences ("cents") that decouple these physical effects, Taylor series expansions are introduced that exhibit clearly the origins of frequency deviations of fretted notes from the corresponding 12-tone equal temperament (12-TET) values. A simple in situ technique is demonstrated for measurement of the changes in frequency of open strings arising from small adjustments in length, and a simple procedure is proposed that any interested guitarist can use to estimate the corresponding frequency shifts due to tension and bending stiffness for their own guitars and string sets. Based on these results, a least-squares fit method is employed to select values of saddle and nut setbacks that map fretted frequencies-for a particular string set and guitar-almost perfectly onto their 12-TET targets. A general approach to tempering an "off-the-shelf" guitar is shown to further reduce the tonal errors inherent in any fretted musical instrument.

A minimal dynamical model of Intonation: Tone contrast, alignment, and scaling of American English pitch accents as emergent properties

The pitch accent system of Mainstream American English (MAE) is one of the most well-studied phenomena within the Autosegmental-Metrical (AM) approach to intonation. In this work we present an explicit model grounded in dynamical theory that predicts both qualitative phonological and quantitative phonetic generalizations about the MAE system. While the traditional AM account separates a phonological model of the structure of the accents from the F0 algorithm that interprets the phonological specification, we propose a unified dynamical model that encompasses both. The proposed model is introduced incrementally, one dynamical term at a time, to arrive at the minimal model needed to account for observed empirical generalizations, avoiding unnecessary complexity. The quantitative and qualitative properties of the MAE system that inform the dynamical model are based on an analysis of a large database of productions of the four most well-studied pitch accents of American English: three rising accents (H*, L+H*, L*+H) and a low-falling accent (L*). The dynamic model highlights the importance of velocity-based measures of F0, not typically invoked in intonational research, as key to understanding F0 differences among pitch accent categories. Although the focus of this work is on the MAE pitch accent system, suggestions are made for how the unified phonetic-phonological dynamical framework presented can be further developed to account for other pitch-based phenomena in a variety of languages.

PHONETIC TYPOLOGY

In spite of many works in the field of phonetics some problems of typology still want systematisation both on segmental and suprasegmental levels. Experimental research is one of them. The research is aimed at determining phonetic typologi- cal characteristics in English and Ukrainian on segmental and suprasegmental levels. The results of the research demonstrate the significant amount of typo- logically similar characteristics in English and Ukrainian. The presence of fore lingual and back lingual vowels, plosives, fricatives, voiced and voiceless conso- nants, such phenomena as reduction and assimilation in both languages under investigation testify to it. Similar mechanisms of word stress production that is the total energy data (dynamic characteristics and duration time) is another mark of typological similarity of English and Ukrainian. The intonation models, the degree of stability of intonation models, sentence stress variability, the same functions of intonation in the process of speech produc- tion show similar mechanisms of prosody elements’ interaction. The most stable in both languages are the prosodic models of attitudinal and emotional functions of intonation. The status of different functions (the attitudinal function, sense-group delimitation, sense-groups relation, communicative type of utterances, sentence stress) of intonation changes from the subordinate one (as in the function of di- vision into sense groups) up to the dominating one (as in the function reflect- ing the speaker’s emotional state). In correspondence with this status and the poly-functional character of intonation the resulting intonation contour mainly preserves the relevant prosodic features of the dominating intonation function in English and Ukrainian. The qualitative and quantitative differences of segmental (phonematic length of vowels in English, phonemic length of consonants in Ukrainian, some difference in articulation) and suprasegmental units (variety of melody contour structure, prevalence of dynamic characteristics in English and temporal in Ukrainian) in the languages under investigation are explained by linguacultural peculiarities of the communities, their historical development

Synesthesia in a Musician Example of "Colours" by B. Appermont for Trombone with Orchestra/Piano

The purpose of the work is a study of the phenomenon of synesthesia in the context of B. Appermont's musical work "Colours" and the identification of objective regularities and the connection between sound and colour palettes, and also the formation of certain common associations. The methodological basis is the application of the hermeneutic method for the interpretation of certain provisions of general scientific methods of analysis and synthesis. The use of the comparative research method contributed to the identification of intonation models, which ensured the expression of synesthetic correspondences in the general form and means of expression. A structural method was also used to organise the presentation of the research material, a comparative method to clarify the specifics of certain conceptual positions. The scientific novelty of the work is due to the study of synesthesia through the prism of the analysis of a modern work, which is a vivid embodiment of the synthetic perception of art, as well as the expression of emotional shades of literal musical colouristics. Conclusions. Despite the subjectivity of human perception of music, there is a whole series of objective associations of emotional colouring of sound through the prism of artistic colouristics. This leads to a broader interpretation of the composer's toolkit for the additional embodiment of the author's subjective thinking. Such means of emotional reflection have not yet gained widespread use in the composer's heritage and require additional research.
 Keywords: synesthesia, colour hearing, Bert Appermont, trombone, "Colours" for trombone with orchestra and piano.

Continuous Sign Language Recognition and Its Translation into Intonation-Colored Speech.

This article is devoted to solving the problem of converting sign language into a consistent text with intonation markup for subsequent voice synthesis of sign phrases by speech with intonation. The paper proposes an improved method of continuous recognition of sign language, the results of which are transmitted to a natural language processor based on analyzers of morphology, syntax, and semantics of the Kazakh language, including morphological inflection and the construction of an intonation model of simple sentences. This approach has significant practical and social significance, as it can lead to the development of technologies that will help people with disabilities to communicate and improve their quality of life. As a result of the cross-validation of the model, we obtained an average test accuracy of 0.97 and an average val_accuracy of 0.90 for model evaluation. We also identified 20 sentence structures of the Kazakh language with their intonational model.

Spanish–English Cross-Linguistic Influence on Heritage Bilinguals’ Production of Uptalk

The present study examines the production of uptalk in Spanish and in English by Spanish heritage speakers in Southern California. Following the L2 Intonation Learning Theory, we propose that cross-linguistic influence in heritage bilinguals’ uptalk may occur along multiple dimensions of intonation. In this study, we examined the systemic dimension (i.e., presence of uptalk and presence of uptalk with IP-final deaccenting), the frequency dimension (i.e., frequency of uptalk and frequency of uptalk with IP-final deaccenting), and the realizational dimension (i.e., pitch excursion and rise duration) of heritage bilinguals’ uptalk. Our data showed that the three dimensions of intonation demonstrate varying degrees of cross-linguistic influence. The heritage bilinguals produced uptalk with IP-final deaccenting in both languages (i.e., systemic dimension), but produced it more in English than in Spanish (i.e., frequency dimension). That is, IP-final deaccenting emerges in heritage bilinguals’ uptalk in Spanish, but heritage bilinguals seem to recognize that this is an English feature that is not allowed in Spanish and try to suppress it as much as possible when producing uptalk in Spanish. However, in the realizational dimension, the heritage bilinguals demonstrated either phonetic assimilation to English (i.e., pitch excursion) or individual variability conditioned by language learning experience (i.e., rise duration). The asymmetry found across the dimensions suggests that, when bilinguals’ two languages are in competition for finite online resources, such as in the case of spontaneous speech production, phonological distinctions between L1 and L2 prosodic structures are kept, whereas phonetic differences that do not lead to any change in meaning are more prone to undergo cross-linguistic influence in order to reduce online processing cost. This study attempts to fill a gap in the literature on the cross-linguistic influence of intonation by bringing attention to heritage bilinguals. Heritage bilingualism introduces bilingual contexts that are often left unnoticed in traditional L2 acquisition scenarios (e.g., transfer from L2 to L1 intonation, asymmetry between order of acquisition and language dominance). Given that many aspects of cross-linguistic influence are shared across bilinguals, the investigation of heritage bilinguals’ intonation will contribute to building robust models of bilingual intonation.

The rise tone in the English and Malay intonations of Malay learners of English


 
 
 English is a widely spoken language around the world and its intonation may vary significantly across its varieties. Miscommunication is possible given that intonation may function differently in different varieties. Given this context, this study sets out to describe functions of the rise tone in the English and Malay intonations of Malay learners, and to determine the influence of their L1 on the use of the rise tone in Malaysian English. Sixty ESL learners were asked to narrate a short story individually according to a series of pictures presented to them. Eight of them were also asked to narrate their stories in Malay. Their narrations were analysed acoustically using Praat and the tone functions were identified using Brazil’s Discourse Intonation model. Findings show that the learners used the rise tone in both languages mainly to: (i) convey new and shared information, (ii) continue speaking, and (iii) present items in a list. Findings may contribute details to Malaysian English phonology and shed some light on intonation usage among Malaysian English speakers.
 
 

A listener in a musical work

Relevance of the study. The development of musical culture takes place in the commonwealth of creative processes of the composer, musician-performer and listener. At the same time, to the last of the listed categories is not given enough attention in modern musicology. This especially applies to music-theoretical explorations of the music listener's participation in the formation of the semantic space of a musical work. The focus is on the category of the mass (average) listener, the vast majority of whom do not know much about music.
 The purpose of the article is to consider the function of the average music listener in the integral communicative structure of a musical work, which is expressed by the sequence: composer — performer — listener.
 The methodology. The theoretical position proposed in the article is based on the key points of the concept of musical interpretation by V. G. Moskalenko. It is about the understanding of intonation, the music-intonation triad, in which the movement of musical thinking from the intonation model to the intonation-result is symbolically presented, as well as three types of the text of a musical work. To analyze the creative function of the listener in the semantic field of a musical work, a musical-genetic approach is used, which is indicative of the movement of musical thought from its ancestral foundations to the final result. In this aspect, the following are developing: A) M. Mykhaylov's theoretical approach regarding intonation bases of creative activity of musical thinking; B) terminological differentiation of the principle of musical intonation in relation to the composer, musician-performer and listener.
 Results and conclusions. The formation of the semantic space of a musical work is considered in the trinity of the creative action of the composer, musician-performer and listener. In the category of music listeners, two types are distinguished: professional and average (mass) listener. The focus is on the average listener. The research uses the musical-genetic method, which involves the sequential movement of musical or cognitive thought from the ancestral foundations through the stage of formation to the final result. Three groups of texts of a musical work are identified, which are informants about its artistic identity: sheet music, text-sound and psychological text. The role of the psychological text in the formation of the semantic field of a musical work is emphasized. In the development of M. Mykhaylov's intonation concept of musical thinking, the effect of the three-link structure of the formation of the musical thought of the composer, the musician-performer, and the average listener is separately traced. The importance of the relatively independent function of the average listener in the social "biography" of the interpretive life of a musical work is emphasized, which ultimately affects the variant renewal and even the development of its semantic field. The conclusion is made about the need to support the development of the intonation-creative initiative of the average listener in any possible way conditions of modern forms.

Prosody in Sign Languages

This chapter addresses the debate concerning the status of nonmanuals (head, face, body) as prosodic or not by exploring in detail how prosody is structured in speech and what might be parallels and differences in sign. Prosody is divided into two parts, rhythmic phrasing (timing, syllables, stress), and intonation. To maximize accessibility, in each part, an introduction to what is known for speech is presented, followed by what is known and/or claimed for sign languages. With the exception of the internal structure of syllables, sign languages are very similar to spoken languages in the rhythmic domain. In the intonational domain, the parallels are less strong, in part because analogies of nonmanual functions to spoken intonation tend to be based on older/simpler models of intonation. There needs to be much more detailed research on sign languages to catch up with the recent research on spoken intonation.

Performance analysis of different intonation models in Kannada speech synthesis

Text <span lang="EN-US">to speech (TTS) is a system that generates artificial speech from text input. The prosodic models used improve the quality of the synthesized speech especially naturalness and intelligibility. The prosody involves intonation, intonation refers to the variations in the pitch frequency (F0) with respect to time in an utterance. This work mainly concentrates on building feedback neural network model to predict F0 contour in the utterances using Fujisaki intonation model parameters as the input features to the network since the Fujisaki intonation model is data driven and not a rule based one. In this work we have built 4-layer feedback neural network in the festival framework. Finally, the synthetically generated Kannada speech using the neural network model, is compared for its performance with the classification and regression tree (CART) model and Tilt model. Database of simple declarative Kannada sentences created by Carnegie Mellon University have been deployed in this work. From the study it is very clear that F0 contours can be accurately predicted using CART and neural network models, whereas naturalness and intelligibility is high in CART model rather than neural network model.</span>

PROMINENCE AND MEANING SELECTION IN GHANAIAN ENGLISH DISCOURSE: TOWARDS A CATEGORIZATION OF THE NEW ENGLISHES

All models of intonation recognize that speakers in any communication context select prominence based on their communicative intents. Consequently, every prominent syllable bears a specific communicative function. However, while prominence selection appears fixed in inner circle Englishes, the same cannot be said of outer (OC) and expanding circle (EC) Englishes. Results from research clearly suggest that it is not always possible for OC and EC speakers to select prominence to indicate meaning selection. This study reports findings on the selection of prominence in Ghanaian English in relation to Brazil’s Discourse Intonation model. Data consisting of 6 hours of English conversations from 100 Ghanaians were analyzed using Brazil’s model. Results show that just as in other OC English varieties, Ghanaians assign prominence to individual syllables with communicative intent, although their selections may not always coincide with the functions proposed in Brazil’s model. Based on these results, it is argued that rather than being viewed as deficiencies, phonological choices such as prominence selection should be regarded as common to OC Englishes. The study, therefore, argues for an adoption of a model that describes the intonation of outer circle Englishes in relation to their contexts and not on a native speaker model.
 
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Modelling microprosodic effects can lead to an audible improvement in articulatory synthesis.

When pitch is explicitly modelled for parametric speech synthesis, microprosodic variations of the fundamental frequency f0 are usually disregarded by current intonation models. While there are numerous studies dealing with the nature and the origin of microprosody, little research has been done on its audibility and its effect on the naturalness of synthetic speech. In this work, the influence of obstruent-related microprosodic variations on the perceived naturalness of articulatory speech synthesis was studied. A small corpus of 20 German words and sentences was re-synthesized using the state-of-the-art articulatory synthesizer VocalTractLab. The pitch contours of the real utterances were extracted and fitted with the Target-Approximation-Model. After the real microprosodic variations were removed from the obtained pitch contours, synthetic variations were applied based on a microprosody model. Subsequently, multiple stimuli with different microprosody amplitudes were synthesized and evaluated in a listening experiment. The results indicate that microprosodic variations are barely audible, but can lead to a greater perceived naturalness of the synthesized speech in certain cases.

Prosody of Abuse

The relevance of the study of the prosodic structure of speech acts of abuse is due to the tasks faced by an expert linguist in the study of oral discourse. The present study is experimental; in its course, for the first time, a set of universal and individual prosodic means used when pronouncing a conflict statement with signs of verbal aggression is considered. The purpose of the article is to identify the prosodic characteristics of abuse as an illocutionary act and study the features of suprasegmental units of speech containing invective elements, including those in the structure of utterances not limited by the semantics and pragmatics of abuse. An interdisciplinary approach is applied to analyzing spoken texts based on the appeal to acoustic, auditory, and linguistic analysis methods. The study’s object was unique, authentic utterances: spontaneous sounding speech qualified by the preliminary investigation authorities as a public abuse to a government official. As a result of the study, we identified suprasegmental units that characterize the speakers’ invective speech. The prosodic components of the speech act of abuse within the framework of the utterance include the ascending-descending nature of the frequency of the main tone and increased dynamic characteristics of speech. Statements containing signs of abuse are often carriers of other goals. Prosodic accents in such utterances vary and depend on the leading speech purpose of the utterance. Together with their addresser’s speech goal, the analyzed utterances’ propositional content is manifested by a particular prosodic structure. The intonational model of such statements when solving diagnostic expert problems acts as one of the indicators of a subjective negative assessment, which contributes to identifying a speech act as an abuse.

Взаємодія просодичних характеристик у реалізації висловлювань-здивувань

The aim of the article is to define the role of prosodic variables play in actualizing emotional utterances. Sometimes they can be the only ones that indicate the speaker’s pragmatic intention. The purpose of the study is to determine the interaction level of prosodic means that helps to achieve maximum effect on the recipient as well as to establish the invariant of the intonation model of utterances expressing surprise and its variable modifications. The correlation of the intonation components and parts of the intonation contour is able to provide an adequate description of positive, negative, indefinite and complex emotions. Utterances expressing surprise of different kinds are characterized by the variability of a pitch-tone level, tempo, timbre, rhythm, each of which carries certain semantic meaning. At the same time, the type of a nuclear tone, scale, pre-scale, core elements of the melodic contour, interacting with the components of intonation define the modal meaning of an utterance. To determine the common and distinct perceptual prosodic characteristics of utterances expressing surprise, as the most frequent emotional speech units of business and cultural communication, with a view to define the prosodic model of the utterances explored, the auditory and acoustic analyses were performed. The perceptive and acoustic analyses comparison allowed us to formulate the general structure of the intonation patterns of utterances expressing surprise. It is concluded that the leading prosodic means, which differentiate the types of utterances expressing surprise, should include: the tone level of the beginning of the syntagm, the tone of the first stressed syllable, the configuration of the terminal tone and its range, the rate of pitch frequency change in the terminal rhythm group, the frequency range of the intonation group, the tone intervals on the pre-scale, scale, nuclear tone as well as tempo and timbre. Linguistic interpretation of the results of the perceptual and acoustic analyses allows us to consider the established intonation features sufficiently complete to describe their prosodic model and define them as appropriate for the use in teaching proper intonation of the English emotional utterances. The achieved data can be used in teaching students the most common intonation patterns of emotional utterances and to make them realize semantic variabilities of utterances expressing surprise.

ТЕОРЕТИЧЕСКИЕ ОСНОВЫ СОВРЕМЕННОГО МУЗЫКАЛЬНО-РИТМИЧЕСКОГО ВОСПИТАНИЯ

Although the development of rhythmic and intonation models of the main genres has not been widely spread in music pedagogy, it is very relevant for the music and rhythmic education for beginners. From this point of view, the article substantiates the expediency of continuous work on selecting rhythmic intonations as semantically significant structural units of the musical process for rhythmic lessons, providing targeted music and rhythmic education. The article discusses from different angles the defining value of a thoughtful attitude to the meaning of sounding intonations, which is especially important for adequate orientation in the semantics of musical genres and subsequent motor embodiment. The article reveals the need to significantly expand the content of the “Rhythmic” discipline through the plastic modeling of speech intonations, especially poetic (rhythmically organized) speech, vocal music, as well as various genres of instrumental music.

Discourse Intonation Patterns in The Non-Interrogative Utterances of Selected Educated Nigerian Speakers of English

Previous studies on English intonation have concentrated on its rule-governed patterns; people’s spontaneous utterance intonational choice characteristics are inadequately explored. This study investigated the interactionally-motivated intonation patterns of selected educated Nigerian speakers of English (ENSE) to determine the conformity of their spontaneous speech intonation patterns with their interactional context. David Brazil’s Discourse Intonation (DI) model provided the theoretical framework. Thirty-two excerpts were purposively sampled from the spontaneous utterances of 17 purposively selected electronic media participants (Group A) and 15 focus group discussion participants (Group B). Structure and centrality to the messages of the excerpts informed the selection of the analysed non-interrogative tone units. Data were collected using textual analysis, FGD and questionnaire. Frequency and analysis of variance were used for quantitative analysis. The participants’ non-interrogative tone-unit intonation patterns largely ran counter to DI, with 7 excerpts (41.2%) from Group A and 5 (33.3%) from Group B largely conforming to DI (p = 0.642), even when they did not necessarily obey formalised rules. Statistical p-value, being above 0.05, showed no statistically significant difference in the mean between the two groups. The selected ENSE’s intonational choices ran contrary to DI. ENSE’s natural speech intonational choices are generally inconsistent as they follow no specific set of rules.

Theoretical conditions for the analysis of the children choir repertoire in its historical retrospective (on the basis of the cantata for children «The Sun Circle» by L. V. Dychko)

Theoretical conditions for the analysis of the children choir repertoire in its historical retrospective (on the basis of the cantata for children «The Sun Circle» by L. V. Dychko)

An intonational model of Shanghai Wu: A pitch-accent analysis

This paper presents an intonational model of Shanghai Wu in the Autosegmental-Metrical framework. Shanghai’s peculiar phrasal tonal system, which spreads lexical tones over sandhi domains, is well-discussed in the literature; however, there is no account of the language's contrastive intonational elements and their phonetic realization. Grounded in phonetic data collected from 14 Shanghainese speakers born between 1945 and 1963, the paper analyzes the language as a pitch-accent system rather than a tonal one, with three distinctive accents: L* + H, H* + L, and L*. These pitch accents pair with one of two accentual phrase-like boundary tones, La and LHa with specific tonotactic requirements. Additionally, I will describe the prosodic hierarchy, as determined by the intonation, as having two levels above the accentual phrase, the intonational phrase (marked via initial pitch range expansion and one of three boundary tones: L%, %, and H%) as well as the major phrase. Together with a labelling system, this analysis allows for easy annotation of Shanghainese tonal events, similar to the ToBI-type models for languages such as Japanese and Serbo-Croatian.This paper presents an intonational model of Shanghai Wu in the Autosegmental-Metrical framework. Shanghai’s peculiar phrasal tonal system, which spreads lexical tones over sandhi domains, is well-discussed in the literature; however, there is no account of the language's contrastive intonational elements and their phonetic realization. Grounded in phonetic data collected from 14 Shanghainese speakers born between 1945 and 1963, the paper analyzes the language as a pitch-accent system rather than a tonal one, with three distinctive accents: L* + H, H* + L, and L*. These pitch accents pair with one of two accentual phrase-like boundary tones, La and LHa with specific tonotactic requirements. Additionally, I will describe the prosodic hierarchy, as determined by the intonation, as having two levels above the accentual phrase, the intonational phrase (marked via initial pitch range expansion and one of three boundary tones: L%, %, and H%) as well as the major phrase. Together with a labelling system, this an...

FOCALIZATION AS LINGUISTIC PHENOMENON

The article reveals the principal notions of focalization, its functions and features (emphasis and contrast) and their influence on transforming the model of the prosodic structure of the actual division of the utterance. Most frequently, focalization of a text fragment is prosodically expressed with a high register and extension of the tonal range, a raised loudness and a distinct pronunciation. It is established that one of the most well-known factors of the transformation of the prototype prosodic model is the listener’s focus on the most important aspects of the message, the conveyance of the semantic interaction of the message’s specific aspects. Focalization is interwoven with the both possible manifestations of this function: logical stress (in case of the opposition of words) or emphatic stress is implemented by its means. Regarding the changes in the tone direction, it should be noted that this tonal feature does not participate directly in forming an intonation model of the discourse’s focalized structures. It has been observed that there exists a certain modification of the tonal contour formed under the influence of the illocutionary and phase factors and certain types of the subjective-modal meanings. Key words: emphasis, opposition, focalization, actual division of the utterance, theme, rheme.