Pitch Level Research Articles

Impacts of supra-segmental phonemes in learning Speaking in English as a foreign language: A Case Study at faculty of education - Kordofan University

The present study was carried out in University of Kordofan at Faculty of Education during the period 2016-2018. The study aimed to investigate the impacts of supra-segmental in learning speaking in English language as foreign language, to identify the difficulties of pronunciation of the supra-segmental features “stress, intonation, pitch and rhythm”. The descriptive and deductive methods were followed. The primary data was collected through different sources including questionnaire, recorded oral test and personal interview for taking notes observation. Comprehensive sampling was used to select the English language lecturers in Faculty of Education and Faculty of Arts where the sample size compromises18 lecturers to answer the questionnaire where 100 students in the department of English at Faculty of Education who were taught supra-segmental programs were selected from population size of 400 students to be given the oral test to measure segmental and supra-segmental features. The data were analyzed by Excel program using Chi-squire Test to measure the differences. The results revealed that 94 % of lecturers stated that supra-segmental affect learning speaking in English language,80 % mentioned that supra-segmental features are not well applied by the students whereas the supra- segmental phonemes according to oral test, students scored mean percent of 77% in the level of stress, 45% in intonation, 55% in rhythm and 44% in pitch. The difference between students score at level of stress and intonation was significant at 0.05 level with calculated and critical χ2 values of 8.39 and 3.84 respectively, the difference between level of stress and rhythm was not significant at 0.05 level with calculated χ2 value of 3.66 and critical value of 3.84 and the difference in scores between level of stress and pitch was significant at 0.05 level with calculated χ2 value of 9.0 and critical value of 3.84.The difference between intonation and rhythm was not significant at 0.05 with calculated and critical χ2 values of 1.0 and 3.84 respectively and between intonation and pitch was not significant at 0.05 with calculated χ2 value of 0.011 and critical value of 3.84. The difference between rhythm and pitch was not significant at 0.05 level where the calculated value of χ2 was 1.22 and the critical value was 3.84. It was concluded that most students faced difficulties in pronouncing the segmental consonant phonemes and have problems in segmental vowel phonemes due to mother tongue language interference. The highest scores were recorded by the level of stress and to some extent the rhythm while intonation and pitch recorded the lowest scores. It is recommended that instructors should raise students' awareness about the importance of learning supra-segmental features. In addition, students should be encouraged to use internet to communicate with English native speakers. Furthermore, supra-segmental must be considered in the teaching and included in the curriculum of English language.

The influence of prosody on politicians’ credibility

Prosody is an important feature in communication, and the way a speaker uses the various elements of prosody in public speaking may affect listeners’ perceptions and thus the speaker’s credibility. This paper explores this topic in relation to speeches made in English by three politicians representing their countries’ 2020 Olympic bids at the 125th IOC (International Olympic Committee) Session in Argentina in September 2013. Of these, the speech given by the Mayor of Madrid, Ana Botella, received widespread critical attention due her style of delivery. As such, it illustrates the importance of prosody in public speaking. However, how prosody affects credibility remains unclear. The aim of this study is to analyze the influence of prosody on listeners’ perceptions of politicians’ credibility. We conducted prosody analysis and rhetorical analysis on the three-minute speeches given by the different candidates at the IOC Session. We also conducted a credibility test to assess the relationship between prosody and credibility. The results confirm that prosody influences speakers’ credibility, with the most credible and the best speaker being the politician who used the highest loudness, a moderate pitch level with a wide pitch range, and a faster speech rate with enough pauses of sufficient length. The study also showed that the less influential the prosody parameters were, the more credible the speaker was perceived to be.

The Effect of Head Flexion/Extension on Acoustic Measures of Singing Voice Quality

A study was undertaken to identify the effect of head flexion/extension on singing voice quality. The amplitude of the fundamental frequency (F0) and the singing power ratio (SPR), an indirect measure of Singer's Formant activity, were measured. F0 and SPR scores at four experimental head positions were compared with the subjects' scores at their habitual positions. Three vowels and three pitch levels were tested. F0 amplitudes and low-frequency partials in general were greater with neck extension, while SPR increased with neck flexion. No effect of pitch or vowel was found. Gains in SPR appear to be the result of damping low-frequency partials rather than amplifying those in the Singer's Formant region. Raising the amplitude of F0 is an important resonance tool for female voices in the high range, and may be of benefit to other voice types in resonance, loudness, and laryngeal function.

The effects of age and pitch level on electroglottographic measures during sustained phonation.

The aim of the present study was to use electroglottography (EGG) to explore the effects of age and pitch level on sustained vowel phonation. Thirty female individuals (10 young, 10 middle-aged, and 10 older speakers) without voice disorders or training in singing participated in this study. Eight EGG parameters were measured during sustained vowel production with a high, mid, or low pitch: fundamental frequency, contact quotient, contacting-time quotient, decontacting-time quotient, speed quotient with a midslope criterion (SQ-mid), jitter, shimmer, and the harmonics-to-noise ratio. Age was found to be a significant factor in fundamental frequency, contact quotient, contacting-time quotient, decontacting-time quotient, and SQ-mid. With increasing age, the mean fundamental frequency decreased while the contact quotient increased. The middle-aged and older speakers had more asymmetrical vocal fold vibratory patterns than the young speakers. As for pitch level, the high pitch had a significantly less decontacting-time quotient and greater SQ-mid than low and mid pitches. The lack of significant interaction between age and pitch level indicates that the effects of age and pitch level could be additive. Finally, the discriminant analyses show that contact quotient is an important factor in predicting the age of a voice.

Auditory-Perceptual Speech Features in Children With Down Syndrome

Speech disorders occur commonly in individuals with Down syndrome (DS), although data regarding the auditory-perceptual speech features are limited. This descriptive study assessed 47 perceptual speech features during connected speech samples in 26 children with DS. The most severely affected speech features were: naturalness, imprecise consonants, hyponasality, speech rate, inappropriate silences, irregular vowels, prolonged intervals, overall loudness level, pitch level, aberrant oropharyngeal resonance, hoarse voice, reduced stress, and prolonged phonemes. These findings suggest that speech disorders in DS are due to distributed impairments involving voice, speech sound production, fluency, resonance, and prosody. These data contribute to the development of a profile of impairments in speakers with DS to guide future research and inform clinical assessment and treatment.

Quantitative evaluation of image quality of megavoltage computed tomography for guiding helical tomotherapy

To quantitatively analyze image quality of two sets of phantom (CatPhan504 and Cheese) Megavoltage computed tomography (MVCT) images acquired by Helical Tomotherapy with three scanning modes (Fine, Normal and Coarse), and to explore and validate a semi-automatic quality assurance procedure for MVCT images of Helical Tomotherapy. On Helical Tomotherapy, CatPan504 and Cheese phantoms were scanned with three pitch levels (Fine, Normal, Coarse: 4 mm, 8 mm, 12 mm/circle) respectively. Pylinac, Matlab and Eclipse were used to calculate and compare spatial resolution, noise level and low contrast resolution of images obtained under three scanning modes respectively. The spatial resolution can be evaluated by the blurring of line-pair CT value in the images of CatPhan504's CTP528 module. The noise level can be evaluated by the integral non-uniformity in the images of Cheese's uniformity module. the low contrast resolution can be evaluated by contrast-to-noise ratio of both phantoms' plug-in module, or visibility of the region of interest (Supra-Slice) in the images of CatPhan504's CTP515 module. Analyses on CatPhan504's line pair module(CTP528 module) showed that the first three line pairs(the gap size are 0.500 cm, 0.250 cm and 0.167 cm respectively) could be clearly observed but blurring began to occur from the fourth line pair(the gap size is 0.125 cm) under Coarse mode. Meanwhile, the first four line pairs were all observable under the Normal and Fine modes. Integral non-integrity index(the value negatively correlated with the noise level) were 0.155 7, 0.136 8 and 0.122 9 for Coarse, Normal and Fine modes respectively. None of the Supra-Slice in CatPhan504's CTP515 module could be observed under three imaging modes. Low contrast contrast-to-noise ratio of Cheese phantom was similar under three modes and the insert visibility exhibited nearly linear growth with the increasing difference between CT average value of the insert material and background. Superiority and inferiority of three image modes in terms of the three image quality index was not consistent. Evaluation results above could provide reference for more rational decision on scanning modes selection of helical tomotherapy, which was based on image visualization demands in clinical practice. The proposed method could also provide guidance for similar image quality assessment and periodic quality assurance.

‘A perfect-full harmonie’: Pitch, tuning and instruments in the Elizabethan and Jacobean mixed consort

Discussions of performance practice in Renaissance music are frequently characterized by the idea that problematic areas of enquiry may be resolved by more than one historically valid solution, thus meaning that a number of modern aesthetic preferences can theoretically be justified. The current article challenges this general notion via the specific example of the Elizabethan and Jacobean mixed consort (comprising lute, cittern, bandora, treble viol/violin, flute/recorder and bass viol). Although this ensemble has generated a large bibliography and discography over many decades of research, certain details still remain disputed, notably the probable pitch level(s) it used and also the size and tuning of each of its instruments, particularly the flute and recorder. In order to resolve these issues, this article considers the surviving mixed consort partbooks alongside relevant English evidence from c.1550 to 1630 found in written sources and iconographical depictions. Collectively, this suggests that, contrary to claims made by previous scholars, the mixed consort typically played at one general pitch level (irrespective of whether it accompanied singers or played alone) and that each of the six parts was primarily intended for one size and type of instrument only.

Money Talks — But Less Well so over the Mobile Phone? The Persistence of the Telephone Voice in a 4G Technology Setting and the Resulting Implications for Business Communication and Mobile-Phone Innovation

Our study is a first step toward the innovative further development of mobile phones with special emphasis on optimizing them for business communication. Traditional landline phones and mobile phones up to 3G technology are known to trigger the so-called “telephone voice”. The phonetic changes induced by the telephone voice (louder speech at a higher pitch level) are suitable for undermining the perceived competence, trustworthiness and charisma of a speaker and can, thus, negatively influence business actions over the mobile phone. In a speech production experiment with 20 speakers and a subsequent acoustic speech-signal analysis of almost 15 000 utterances, we tested in comparison to a baseline face-to-face dialog condition, whether the telephone voice still exists in a technological setting of VoLTE 4G mobile-phone communication. In fact, we found that the typical characteristics of the telephone voice persist even under the currently best technological 4G standards and under silent communication conditions. Moreover, we identified further acoustic-phonetic parameters of the telephone voice, some of which (like a more monotonous intonation) further compound the problem of business communication over the mobile phone. In combination, the extended parametric picture and the persistent occurrence of the “telephone voice” even under quiet 4G conditions suggest that a speech-in-noise-like (i.e. Lombard) adaption is not the only and perhaps not even the primary cause behind the telephone voice. Based on this, we propose a number of innovations and R&D activities for making mobile-phone technology more suitable for business communication.

Native speech plasticity in the German-English late bilingual Stefanie Graf: A longitudinal study over four decades

The purpose of this study was to expose the trajectory of native speech plasticity in the context of late bilingualism through analysis of spontaneous speech of Stefanie Graf (SG) over four decades.With regard to segmental variables, results showed a significant lowering of F2 in /l/, suggesting darkening of the German lateral under the influence of English as a second language (L2). F2 significantly increased in /i/, indicating a more front pronunciation, as predicted due to English L2 acquisition. There was also a significant decrease in F1 of /l/, as well as of /i/, but a significant increase in the F1 frequency of /a/, suggesting widening of the vertical vowel space, potentially due to increasing age. Regarding prosody, there was a significant decrease in pitch level and narrowing of pitch span over time, as expected with increasing age, and surprisingly an increase in average maximum f0 over time, possibly as a result of English L2 acquisition of prosody.These findings suggest that native speech remains plastic post adolescence throughout adulthood, here proposed to be evidenced through a result of acquisition of L2 counterparts in late bilingualism, and that such changes are intertwined with natural biological speech developments over the lifespan.

Using Pitch and Length Information to Assess Speech Prosody: a Parallel Approach

Recent studies on pronunciation instruction underscore the effectiveness of using pitch variation contours to enhance language learners’ awareness of English intonation. Little is known of the situation in language production: Do learners adjust their pitch levels or lengthen or shorten a sound in order to vary their prosody? The current study posits that both pitch and length variations are involved in encoding speech prosody; it purports to quantify their relative importance by using Hincks’s (2005) Pitch Variation Quotient (PVQ) and a self-created length variation quotient (LVQ). The methods section introduces four quantitative methods, using data from the participants’ verbal speech as well as the training material (a song) to compare pitch and length behaviours. Results from three of the four methods support that the learners, after undergoing a period of training (a singing class), improved their length variation but not their pitch variation over a reading task. The fourth method (a mixed between-within ANOVA) also confirms the learners’ general prosodic improvement, but the test raises curious points about the complex relationship between pitch and length that are worth further consideration by pronunciation assessors. Overall, this study provides initial evidence of the importance of length variation for assessing prosodic change.

Fine-grained Implicit Memory for Key and Tempo

Listeners remember the pitch level (key) and tempo of musical recordings they have heard multiple times. They also have long-term implicit memory for the key and tempo of novel melodies heard for the first time in the laboratory. In previous research, however, the stimulus melodies were simple and repetitive and the changes in key or tempo were large. Here, we tested the limits of implicit memory for the key and tempo of more complex stimulus melodies. Musically trained and untrained listeners heard 12 novel melodies during an exposure phase and 24 (12 old, 12 new) during a subsequent test (recognition) phase. From exposure to test, half of the melodies were transposed up or down (changed in key) (Experiment 1), or sped up or slowed down (Experiment 2), but to varying degrees. Musically trained listeners displayed enhanced recognition, but transposing or changing the tempo of the melodies reduced performance similarly for all listeners. The effect of the key change did not wane as the transposition was reduced from 6 semitones to 1, but recognition in general was worse as the pitch range of the stimulus melodies increased. The magnitude of the tempo change had a very small effect on response patterns, but Bayesian analyses indicated that the observed data were more likely without considering magnitude. The results suggest that musically trained and untrained listeners have implicit memory for key and tempo that is remarkably fine-grained, even for melodies that are heard for the first time in the laboratory, such that small changes in either feature make a melody less recognizable.

A Bayesian method for computing intrinsic pitch values using kernel density and nonparametric regression estimates

Abstract The deployment of sensors that characterize the trajectory of pitches and batted balls in three dimensions provides the opportunity to assign an intrinsic value to a pitch that depends on its physical properties and not on its observed outcome. We exploit this opportunity by using a Bayesian framework to learn a set of mappings from five-dimensional velocity, movement, and location vectors to intrinsic pitch values. A kernel method generates nonparametric estimates for the component probability density functions in Bayes theorem while nonparametric regression is used to derive a batted ball weight function that is invariant to the defense, ballpark, and atmospheric conditions. Cross-validation is used to determine the parameters of the model. We use Cronbach’s alpha to show that intrinsic pitch values have a significantly higher reliability than outcome-based pitch values. We also develop a method to combine intrinsic values at the individual pitch level into a statistic that captures the value of a pitcher’s collection of pitches over a period of time. We use this statistic to show that pitchers who outperform their intrinsic values during a season tend to perform worse the following year. We also show that this statistic provides better predictive value for future Earned Run Average (ERA) than either current ERA or Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP).

THE PERCEPTIVE ANALYSIS OF PHATIC GRATITUDE UTTERANCES

The present article is devoted to the study of intonation peculiarities of phatic gratitude speech act. The topicality of the given research is due to lack of complex analysis of gratitude prosody. Survey of linguistic literature shows that intonation of gratitude is explored fragmentarily in most cases. According to K. Aijmer’s viewpoint, gratitude is a stereotypic speech act, the intonation of which is stereotypic as well. The stereotypic intonation is usually realized in everyday situations and it is either rising or falling-rising. True sincere gratitude is pronounced with the falling intonation. However, we do not agree with the opinion of K. Aijmer, as we believe that intonation realization of phatic gratitude utterances can not be limited with only two terminal tones. The prosodic organization of phatic gratitude speech act includes the whole range of means that make up its acoustic image. The methods applied to study the prosodic means of differentiation of phatic gratitude speech act are as follow: the method of theoretical analysis, the method of scientific observation that implies the perceptive analysis, the statistic method. The set of methods used has allowed to define the characteristic features of phatic gratitude speech act. It has been noticed that phatic gratitude utterances are mainly pronounced with the falling terminal tone that prevails in speech of both men (69 %) and women (86.7 %). Besides the falling tone, phatic gratitude can be realized with the rising, falling-rising and level terminal tones. The utterances of argumentative phatic gratitude are pronounced with either falling or level scale. The rising scale is mainly noticed in men’s speech whereas the sliding scale is characteristic of women’s speech. The pitch level and the pitch range depend on the gender factor, i.e. men pronounce phatic gratitude on the low pitch level with narrow pitch range while women pronounce it on the average pitch level with average pitch range. The loudness is normal, as a rule. The decrease of loudness is due to circumstances that make the speaker express gratitude quietly or due to his shyness. Phatic gratitude is pronounced with either normal or quick tempo which is related to insignificance of the preceding stimulus for the addresser.

Effects of pitch level, pitch ratio and finger used for tactile identification on embossed and indented dot arrays

ABSTRACTThe tactile sense is of increasing importance in contemporary human–machine interface design as a means of improving operator information processing performance under sensory resource competitive circumstances. However, there is not enough knowledge of some aspects of human tactile identification ability for different surface textures with varying stimulus characteristics. Thus, the aim of this study was to investigate the effects of dot engraving forms (embossed and indented), dot pitch (4.50, 4.95, and 5.45 mm), pitch ratio (1.00, 1.10, and1.21), and finger used (index and middle) as well as gender on human tactile identification ability. The results here showed significantly higher accuracy of identification for the embossed stimulus and for the pitch ratio of 1.21. The significant interaction effect of dot engraving form and dot pitch indicated that embossed dots with 4.50 mm pitch level produced the best accuracy of identification. No significant differences for finger used and gender were shown.

Indicating Dependency between Spoken Sentences by Prosodic Means

In certain languages and in certain types of data, prosodic features are used to group prosodic units called by some scholars spoken sentences into larger units, often called speech paragraphs. The onsets of the first spoken sentences of these units are marked by a raised pitch level compared to the beginning of the preceding spoken sentence. The prosodic units that are formed typically correspond to topical entities. Prosodic means are also used to indicate relationships between spoken sentences belonging to the same speech paragraph. A new spoken sentence generally starts at a higher pitch compared to the end of the preceding spoken sentence. However, if two consecutive spoken sentences are closely related, the second begins at a lower pitch vis-à-vis the end of the previous spoken sentence, but the subsequent syllable of the new spoken sentence displays raised pitch. This phenomenon of sentence-initial lowered pitch indicates, on one hand, a close discourse relationship with the preceding spoken sentence but, on the other, the beginning of a grammatically independent spoken sentence. The data are in Finnish, and they come from conference-like, monologous presentations that are translated by speech-to-text interpreters to allow the speech to be accessed by the deaf and hard-of-hearing. The analyses are performed using instrumental phonetics methodology.

Visual gender biases in English stop voicing perception

Listeners leverage visual information, such as perceived speaker gender, during speech perception. While work has shown visual gender biases on fricative (Johnson & Strand, 1996) and vowel perception (Johnson et al., 1999), its effects on stop voicing perception are understudied. We present an identification task where visual gender primes (male/female portraits) were used to investigate perceived speaker gender effects on English stop voicing. Subjects (n = 22) identified ‘pa’/’ba’ syllables from an 11-step VOT continuum (0–50 ms) in 5 pitch levels (high: 250 Hz, 230 Hz, mid: 170 Hz, and low: 130 Hz, 110 Hz). High and low pitch tokens were always preceded by a female and male portrait, respectively. Mid pitch tokens were preceded by female or male images in separate blocks. Given that f0 is higher following voiceless obstruents (Lehiste & Peterson 1961; Mohr 1971), if listeners utilize visual gender cues, acoustically ambiguous tokens paired with a male portrait should elicit more voiceless "pa" responses than those paired with a female portrait. Preliminary results pattern in the expected direction; mid tokens are perceived as "pa" more when paired with a male (15–25 ms = 79% "pa" response) than a female face (73% "pa" response); however, this effect was not statistically significant.

Testing the Hyperarticulation and Prosodic Hypotheses of Child-Directed Speech: Insights From the Perceptual and Acoustic Characteristics of Child-Directed Cantonese Tones

The function of child-directed speech has been debated for decades. This study examined the perceptual and acoustic characteristics of child- and adult-directed Cantonese tones to test the hyperarticulation and prosodic hypotheses that have been proposed to account for the acoustic modifications in child-directed speech. Sixty-two mother-child dyads participated in the study. The mothers verbally labeled 30 pictures in monosyllabic isolated words and in the final position of a carrier sentence to the experimenter and their 1- to 5-year-old children. The 8,634 adult- and child-directed productions were low-pass filtered to eliminate lexical information and presented to 5 judges for tone identification. Acoustic analysis was performed on the productions. Acoustically, child-directed tones were produced with an elevated pitch, and the pitch level decreased as the child's age increased. Acoustic contrasts between phonetically similar and more confusing tones were not enhanced in child-directed speech, and unexpectedly, child-directed tones were identified with a lower accuracy than adult-directed tones. The perceptual errors of child-directed tones mirrored the errors found in identifying tones excised from sentence-final position, which had a pitch-lowering effect on the tones. The lower perceptual accuracy, the lack of enhanced acoustic contrasts in confusing tone pairs, and the similarities in the error patterns in identifying tones in child-directed speech and tones in utterance-final position suggest that the acoustic modifications in child-directed tones are prosodic effects serving pragmatic purposes. The findings reject the hyperarticulation hypothesis and support the prosodic hypothesis of child-directed speech.

How does human motor cortex regulate vocal pitch in singers?

Vocal pitch is used as an important communicative device by humans, as found in the melodic dimension of both speech and song. Vocal pitch is determined by the degree of tension in the vocal folds of the larynx, which itself is influenced by complex and nonlinear interactions among the laryngeal muscles. The relationship between these muscles and vocal pitch has been described by a mathematical model in the form of a set of ‘control rules’. We searched for the biological implementation of these control rules in the larynx motor cortex of the human brain. We scanned choral singers with functional magnetic resonance imaging as they produced discrete pitches at four different levels across their vocal range. While the locations of the larynx motor activations varied across singers, the activation peaks for the four pitch levels were highly consistent within each individual singer. This result was corroborated using multi-voxel pattern analysis, which demonstrated an absence of patterned activations differentiating any pairing of pitch levels. The complex and nonlinear relationships between the multiple laryngeal muscles that control vocal pitch may obscure the neural encoding of vocal pitch in the brain.

Brain Science and Music-Research on Pitch Perception Based on Brain Evoked Potential

At the end of the last century, humans’ research in the field of brain science advanced rapidly. Brain science is becoming one of the key science fields researched by different countries. The analysis on neural network of brain is used to research the work mechanism of brain in different tones. In analysis result, the change of brain evoked potential can really reflect the perception of brain to different pitch levels. At different pitch levels, especially for before and after the change, the power spectrum energy density of brain evoked potential signal at different frequency band and the clustering and information absorption of brain’s functional network are obviously different. They are very significant methods of researching music perception at different pitch levels. The two methods complement each other.

Influence of Vortex-Induced Loads on the Motion of SPAR-Type Wind Turbine: A Coupled Aero-Hydro-Vortex-Mooring Investigation

The nonlinear coupling effect between degree-of-freedom (DOFs) and the influence of vortex-induced loads on the motion of SPAR-type floating offshore wind turbine (FOWT) are studied based on an aero-hydro-vortex-mooring coupled model. Both the first- and second-order wave loads are calculated based on the three-dimensional (3D) potential theory. The aerodynamic loads on the rotor are acquired with the blade element momentum (BEM) theory. The vortex-induced loads are simulated with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) approach. The mooring forces are solved by the catenary theory and the nonlinear stiffness provided by the SPAR buoy is also considered. The coupled model is set up and a numerical code is developed for calculating the dynamic response of a Hywind SPAR-type FOWT under the combined sea states of wind, wave, and current. It shows that the amplitudes of sway and roll are dominated by lift loads induced by vortex shedding, and the oscillations in roll reach the same level of pitch in some scenarios. The mean value of surge is changed under the drag loads, but the mean position in pitch, as well as the oscillations in surge and pitch, is little affected by the current. Due to the coupling effects, the heave motion is also influenced by vortex-induced forces. When vortex-shedding frequency is close to the natural frequency in roll, the motions are increased. Due to nonlinear stiffness, super-harmonic response occurs in heave, which may lead to internal resonance.