Nuclear Pitch Accent Research Articles

Individual variability in the use of tonal and non-tonal cues in intonationa).

Greek uses H*, L + H*, and H* + L, all followed by L-L% edge tones, as nuclear pitch accents in statements. A previous analysis demonstrated that these accents are distinguished by F0 scaling and contour shape. This study expands the earlier investigation by exploring additional cues, namely, voice quality, amplitude, and duration, in distinguishing the pitch accents, and investigating individual variability in the selection of both F0 and non-F0 cues. Bayesian multivariate analysis and hierarchical clustering demonstrate that the accents are distinguished not only by F0 but also by additional cues at the group level, with individual variability in cue selection.

Nuclear pitch accents of statements in the Spanish of Mexico City. Data from the corpus norma lingüística culta (1971)

Nuclear pitch accents of statements in the Spanish of Mexico City. Data from the corpus norma lingüística culta (1971)

Intonational alignment in second language acquisition

This study examines whether proficient second language speakers of Belfast English and Northern Standard German accommodate on cross-linguistically different intonational phonological categories and their gradient phonetic implementation in a collaborative map task. Belfast English and Northern Standard German select two different intonation patterns for nuclear pitch accents in declarative utterances. Northern Standard German features a falling pitch accent pattern. In Belfast English, a rising intonation contour is realised. The experiment investigates the production of phonologically different pitch accents in declarative utterances, gradient acoustic characteristics of pitch range in utterance-final position and peak alignment in nuclear pitch accents. Evidence was found for accommodation for all three prosodic phenomena. However, the accommodation patterns were asymmetric in the Belfast English and the Northern Standard German groups of speakers. Furthermore, both phonologically contrastive characteristics and gradient phonetic acoustic detail appeared to be influenced by factors of linguistic function, perceptual salience and familiarity.

Intonation Patterns Used in Non-Neutral Statements by Czech Learners of Italian and Spanish: A Cross-Linguistic Comparison

The objective of the study is to contribute to our understanding of the acquisition of second language intonation by comparing L2 Italian and L2 Spanish as produced by L1 Czech learners. Framed within the L2 Intonation Learning theory, the study sheds light on which tonal events tend to be successfully learnt and why. The study examines different types of non-neutral statements (narrow focus, statements of the obvious, what-exclamatives), obtained by means of a Discourse Completion Task. The findings show that the two groups diverge significantly in producing the nuclear pitch accents L+H* (L2 Spanish) and (L+)H*+L (L2 Italian), which is indicative of a target-like realization in each language. However, the learners struggle with the acquisition of the target boundary tones HL% and L!H% in L2 Spanish and prenuclear pitch accents in both Romance varieties. It is speculated that this is due not only to difficulties in acquiring semantic or systemic dimensions, but also to perceptual salience and frequency effects. In addition, the study explores individual differences and reveals no significant effects of the time spent in an L2-speaking country, the age of learning and the amount of active use of a foreign language on accuracy in L2 production.

Прозодични характеристики на изречения с комуникативно маркиран и комуникативно немаркиран словоред

The paper presents the results from a study of the interaction between intonation and information structure in SVO and OVS sentences with communicatively (un)marked alignment of information structure elements. We analyzed the prosodic features of pre-nuclear and nuclear pitch accents. The information structure elements were characterized using Steedman’s (2000) model which classifies sentence constituents as belonging to one of the following categories: theme-background, theme-focus, rheme-background and rheme-focus. Our study found that unmarked and marked alignment has no effect on the pitch range of the rheme-focus. In cases of communicatively unmarked alignment, the pitch range of the theme-background (and rheme-background) group in OVS sentences is wider than in SVO sentences. Word order has no effect on the duration of the accented syllable. Topicalized constituents belonging to the theme-background in OVS sentences with unmarked alignment form separate intermediate phrases. In cases of marked alignment, the rheme-focus ends with a phrase accent and sometimes a pause. The rheme-background and rheme-focus always take a pitch accent, whereas the theme-background is marked by a pitch accent only in cases of communicatively unmarked alignment. The theme-background is deaccented when the sentence is communicatively marked.

Focus projection need not be based on pitch accents: evidence from Georgian

Based on experimental evidence, this paper shows that the prosodic realization of focus in Georgian is consistent with focus projection/percolation – the phenomenon by which prosodic prominence on a sub-constituent signals focus on a larger constituent – and can be accounted for with a Default Prosody-style analysis. In focus projection in English, object-focus utterances are realized in the same way as VP- or broad-focus utterances, because in all three cases the object carries the nuclear pitch accent. In contrast, in subject-focus utterances, the subject carries the nuclear pitch accent, which is incompatible with broad- or VP-focus interpretation; focus projection does not arise. Unlike English, Georgian, a ‘phrase language’, relies not on pitch accents but on boundary tones and phrasing in focus marking (Skopeteas & Féry 2010; 2016). This language type has not been explicitly addressed from the perspective of focus projection. Nevertheless, the results reported here demonstrate that the prosodic realization of subject- and object-focus in Georgian, expressed with boundary tones and duration of the stressed syllable, fits with the focus-projection pattern. This paper shows that the Georgian data can be accounted for with the Default Prosody approaches to focus projection, but not approaches employing the formal mechanism of F-projection. Accordingly, the Georgian facts provide a novel argument in favor of the Default Prosody approaches.

Entonación de los enunciados aseverativos en el español de la Ciudad de México entre los años 1960 y 1970

This paper describes the prosodic features —with emphasis on the nuclear pitch accent— of the statements documented in the corpus “Norma lingüística culta” and “Habla popular de la Ciudad de México” (Lope Blanch, 1971, 1976). The prosodic description is carried out with the Autosegmental Metrical model and the analysis of sociolinguistic factors. Regarding the nuclear pitch accent L+H *, the statistical analysis showed two significant factors: narrow focus statements and the low level of education. The nuclear accent H * is more prevalent in men and the low level of education. By contrast we observed that the group of adults, the higher education and the broad focus statements favor the descending contour, which has lesser relation with vernacular patterns in Central Mexican Spanish.

Phonetic accommodation in interaction with a virtual language learning tutor: A Wizard-of-Oz study

We present a Wizard-of-Oz experiment examining phonetic accommodation of human interlocutors in the context of human-computer interaction. Forty-two native speakers of German engaged in dynamic spoken interaction with a simulated virtual tutor for learning the German language called Mirabella. Mirabella was controlled by the experimenter and used either natural or hidden Markov model-based synthetic speech to communicate with the participants. In the course of four tasks, the participants’ accommodating behavior with respect to wh-question realization and allophonic variation in German was tested. The participants converged to Mirabella with respect to modified wh-question intonation, i.e., rising F0 contour and nuclear pitch accent on the interrogative pronoun, and the allophonic contrast [ɪç] vs.[ɪk] occurring in the word ending 〈-ig〉. They did not accommodate to the allophonic contrast [ɛː] vs.[eː] as a realization of the long vowel 〈-ä-〉. The results did not differ between the experimental groups that communicated with either the natural or the synthetic speech version of Mirabella. Testing the influence of the “Big Five” personality traits on the accommodating behavior revealed a tendency for neuroticism to influence the convergence of question intonation. On the level of individual speakers, we found considerable variation with respect to the degree and direction of accommodation. We conclude that phonetic accommodation on the level of local prosody and segmental pronunciation occurs in users of spoken dialog systems, which could be exploited in the context of computer-assisted language learning.

Focus in wh-questions

This paper addresses two long-standing issues concerning focus: first, the question of whether the focal interpretation is directly read off the prosodic structure of a sentence, or it is rather mediated by a [focus] feature encoded in the syntactic representation; second, whether interrogative wh-phrases are inherently endowed with a [focus] feature. We provide evidence from two prosodic experiments on direct wh-questions in Italian, showing that the Nuclear Pitch Accent (NPA) and main stress fall on the lexical verb, without a concomitant focal interpretation of the latter. Furthermore, we show that NPA assignment is sensitive to the derivational history of the wh-phrase under short-distance vs. long-distance extraction. We account for the observed NPA distribution in terms of a [focus] feature which is bundled with the [wh] in direct questions, and is specified on each phase head that hosts in its edge one link of the wh-chain. Thus, v° is specified for the feature bundle {wh, focus} and attracts the assignment of the NPA, which is then realized on the lexical verb. Our findings, thus, cast doubt on the direct association between prosodic prominence and a focal interpretation.

The Intonation of Information-Seeking and Rhetorical Questions in Icelandic

We investigate the intonation of information-seeking and rhetorical questions in Icelandic. The results for the information-seeking questions largely confirm observations in previous literature based mostly on introspective data: Polar questions are mostly realized with late rise nuclear accents where the peak aligns after a stressed syllable (L*+H),wh-questions with peak accents (H*);wh-questions often start high (%H, H*). Illocution types (that is, information-seeking versus rhetorical questions) differ in nuclear pitch accent types and in the type and frequency of prenuclear accents. The default boundary tone is low (L%) across question types and illocution types. The results are discussed against the background of previous findings with respect to the relationship between question and illocution type, and prosody.*

The prosody of rhetorical questions in English

This article contributes to our knowledge about the prosodic realisation of rhetorical questions (RQs) as compared to information-seeking questions (ISQs). It reports on a production experiment testing the prosody of Englishwh-and polar RQs and ISQs in a Canadian variety. In previous literature, the contribution of prosody to the distinction between the two illocution types has often been limited to the intonational realisation of the terminus of the utterance, i.e. whether it ends in a rise or a fall. Along with edge tones, we tested other phonological and phonetic parameters. Our results are as follows: (i) The intonational terminus was distinctive only for polar questions (rise vs plateau), not forwh-questions (low throughout). (ii) Moreover, the semantic difference between RQs and ISQs is signalled by pitch accents. It is reflected in nuclear pitch accent type forwh-questions, and accent type and position for polar questions. (iii) Phonetically, RQs are produced with longer constituent durations and – forwh-questions – a softer voice quality in thewh-word. Taken together, several intonational categories and phonetic parameters contribute to the distinction between RQs and ISQs. A simple distinction between rising and falling intonation is in any case insufficient.

‘What and then a little robot brings it to you?’ The reactivewhat-xconstruction in spoken dialogue

In the process of compiling a new corpus of contemporary spoken British English, theLondon–Lund Corpus 2, we hit upon a construction used in the conversations recorded that had not previously been dealt with in the literature, namely the reactivewhat-xconstruction. Prompted by this discovery, we carried out a detailed analysis of its properties and constraints within the broad framework of Cognitive Linguistics, namely Construction Grammar, and found that the reactivewhat-xconstruction features the interrogativewhatdirectly followed by a phrasal or clausal complementx. Moreover,whatforms one tone unit with the complement and never carries a nuclear pitch accent. The core meaning is to signal an immediate reaction to something said by another speaker in the preceding turn, and the dialogic functions include questions proper as well as expressions of disagreement. The two contributions of this study are: (i) to provide a definition of the reactivewhat-xconstruction and (ii) to propose a crucial theoretical extension of Construction Grammar involving a broadening of the concept of construction to cover not only the lexical–semantic pairing but also prosodic properties and the role of the construction in the interactive dialogic space in speech.

Spelling Out Focus‐Fronting Chains andWh‐Chains: The Case of Italian

AbstractThis article tackles the optionality of focus fronting in Italian in terms of alternative spellout of the highest or lowest link of a movement chain. The two options are equally optimal in that the highest link satisfies Scope Transparency while the lowest link, bearing [focus] and attracting the nuclear pitch accent, satisfies Rightmostness; on the other hand, spellout of intermediate chain links satisfies neither principle, and it is therefore suboptimal. As for interrogativewh‐chains, it is argued that Rightmostness is nonapplicable, because in Italian the lowest link of thewh‐chain does not possess the [focus] feature; consequently, Scope Transparency always selects the highest chain link as the optimal spellout option.

Relative influences of information structure and utterance-final position on the prosodic implementation of nuclear pitch accents

The phonological and phonetic realization of a nuclear pitch accent has been claimed to reflect aspects of its information structure (IS). As the rightmost accented word in an intonational phrase, the nuclear pitch accent often co-occurs with utterance-final position, which in American English, is often cued by prosodic means such as creaky voice and domain-final lengthening. The present study investigated the relative influence of IS and utterance-final position on the prosodic implementation of words in nuclear position. The IS of an object noun phrase occurring in nuclear position was manipulated to be given, accessible, new, or contrastive relative to a parallel object noun in the preceding sentence. The critical object noun occurred in utterance-final position in experiment 1 and in non-final position and preceding a semantically vacuous syntactic phrase in experiment 2 (e.g., “that was there,” “for it). Given that contrastive information significantly influenced the prosodic implementation of the object noun in both experiments with respective reduction and enhancement effects, but utterance-final position nevertheless regulated the particular phonetic instantiation. While IS modulated the degree of creakiness, duration, and intensity in final position, IS conditions in non-final nuclear position modulated the type of f0 contour and duration.

Verb placement and accentuation: Does prosody constrain the Estonian V2?

Abstract The paper contributes to the understanding of the variation in finite verb placement in Estonian, a verb-second language, by establishing two descriptive facts. First, it identifies a previously undescribed finite verb position in Estonian declarative main clauses, which will be referred to as ‘clause-medial’. The clause-medial position is located between clause-medial sentence adverbials on the one hand, and VP adverbials and the complements of the verb on the other hand. Secondly, the paper reports two empirical studies providing evidence in support of the hypothesis that the occurrence of a finite verb in the proposed clause-medial position, as opposed to its occurrence in the second position, correlates with its accentuation. While clause-medial verbs tend to bear a nuclear pitch accent, second-position verbs don’t. Finally, the paper briefly discusses some broader implications of the existence of the clause-medial finite verb position and of the interaction between verb placement and prosody.

Entonación de los enunciados aseverativos en el español de Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas

El objetivo principal de este artículo es describir las configuraciones tonales de los enunciados aseverativos en el español de Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas. El análisis integra tres fuentes de datos: formal, semiespontáneo y espontáneo. Los resultados muestran: i) el acento nuclear L+(¡)H*, favorecido por los hombres y el estilo espontáneo, y ii) el alineamiento temprano del primer pico tonal, favorecido por el grupo de edad correspondiente a adultos y el nivel de instrucción bajo. La descripción sociolingüística y geolingüística de esta variedad busca contribuir con nuevos datos en el ámbito de la dialectología prosódica de México.

The tonal patterns and the H peak alignment of nuclear vs. prenuclear pitch accent in two varieties of English: A preliminary report

The tonal patterns and the H peak alignment of nuclear vs. prenuclear pitch accent in two varieties of English: A preliminary report

The tonal patterns and the H peak alignment of nuclear vs. prenuclear pitch accent in two varieties of English: A preliminary report

The tonal patterns and the H peak alignment of nuclear vs. prenuclear pitch accent in two varieties of English: A preliminary report

Melodic constructions in Spanish: Metrical structure determines the association properties of intonational tones

This paper explores phrase-length-related alternations in the association of tones to positions in metrical structure in two melodic constructions of Spanish. An imitation-and-completion task eliciting (a) the low–falling–rising contour and (b) the circumflex contour on intonation phrases (IPs) of one, two, and three prosodic words revealed that, although the focus structure and pragmatic context is constant across conditions, phrases containing one prosodic word differ in their nuclear (i.e. final) pitch accents and edge tones from phrases containing more than one prosodic word. For contour (a), short intonation phrases (e.g. [Manolo]IP) were produced with a low accent followed by a high edge tone (L* H% in ToBI notation), whereas longer phrases (e.g. [El hermano de la amiga de Manolo]IP‘Manolo's friend's brother’) had a low accent on the first stressed syllable, a rising accent on the last stressed syllable, and a low edge tone (L* L+H* L%). For contour (b), short phrases were produced with a high–rise (L+H* ¡H%), whereas longer phrases were produced with an initial accentual rise followed by an upstepped rise–fall (L+H* ¡H* L%). These findings imply that the common practice of describing the structure of intonation contours as consisting of a constant nuclear pitch accent and following edge tone is not adequate for modeling Spanish intonation. To capture the observed melodic alternations, we argue for clearer separation between tones and metrical structure, whereby intonational tones do not necessarily have an intrinsic culminative or delimitative function (i.e. as pitch accents or as edge tones). Instead, this function results from melody-specific principles of tonal–metrical association.

La entonación interrogativa del español en la frontera México-EEUU de América: comparación de tres corpus de habla de informantes texanos con estudios superiores

AbstractThe objective of this work is analysing absolute interrogative sentences from the Spanish of San Antonio de Texas using three corpus featuring different levels of spontaneity (formal ad hoc, situational and conversational), and uttered by native speakers with superior studies. The choice of these corpus and their acoustic analyses have been performed according to the methodology established by the international project AMPER (Atlas Multimédia Prosodique de l’Espace Roman). Furthermore, we have undertaken the phonetic-phonological labelling of the boundary tones and of initial and nuclear pitch accents within the framework of the autosegmental-metrical model. This study has been carried out with the aim of contributing to the knowledge of Texan intonation, in order to make comparisons with other varieties of Spanish language as well as to include it in the international Atlas AMPER. We hypothesize that interrogatives from the informants considered follow the patterns described for Mexican interrogatives (Sosa, 1999; Ávila, 2003; Martín Butragueño, 2004, among others), taking into account the geographical location of San Antonio de Texas in relation to Mexico and the influence of Mexican immigration, which has a strong presence in San Antonio. Results provide evidence of such influence, particularly in the final ascent of the F0.