Prosodic Differences Research Articles

Emotional Intelligence in Text-To-Speech Synthesis in Pali Language Using Fuzzy Logic

The field of emotional text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis is making swift progress within the realm of artificial intelligence, holding immense promise to transform our interaction with technology. By using advanced algorithms to analyze and understand the emotional content of text, these systems are able to produce spoken language that accurately conveys the intended emotional tone of the message. Despite the existence of several Text-To-Speech systems across various languages, Pali language is yet to have its own. As a result, we have taken the initiative to create a Text-To-Speech synthesizer exclusively for Pali. Our system offers an end-to-end solution for emotional speech synthesis via Text-To-Speech. We address the problem by incorporating disentangled, well-grained prosody features with global, sentence-level emotion implanting. These well-grained features learn to denote local prosodic differences disentangled from the speaker, tone, and worldwide emotion label. Prosody is usually modeled by rules, so we have implemented the fuzzy logic system to develop a controller for the prosody of Pali speech. The fuzzy controller handles different linguistic parameters in three types of sentences: interrogative, exclamatory, and declarative. The final system produces comprehensible speech that mimics the appropriate intonation for every type of sentence. In this paper, we introduce and outline the application of a fuzzy paradigm to incorporate a Text-To-Speech system for the Pali language while preserving a rule-based Concatenative synthesizer. In the outline of classic Concatenative TTS systems, we recommend a new method in order to increase Concatenative unit selection computation, directed at increasing synthetic speech perceptual superiority. In order to tackle the problem of phonemes that are prone to multiple descriptions in rule-based speech synthesis, the proposed solution involves a fuzzy system. In the introductory section, we offer a concise description of the current context surrounding the challenge of emotional speech synthesis. The second section of this paper outlines the notable advancements made in emotional speech synthesis, acknowledging the contributions of various researchers in this field. The third section delves into the technical details of implementing a fuzzy system The last section of the paper presents the main conclusions and future research scope.

Visual scanning patterns of a talking face when evaluating phonetic information in a native and non-native language.

When comprehending speech, listeners can use information encoded in visual cues from a face to enhance auditory speech comprehension. For example, prior work has shown that the mouth movements reflect articulatory features of speech segments and durational information, while pitch and speech amplitude are primarily cued by eyebrow and head movements. Little is known about how the visual perception of segmental and prosodic speech information is influenced by linguistic experience. Using eye-tracking, we studied how perceivers' visual scanning of different regions on a talking face predicts accuracy in a task targeting both segmental versus prosodic information, and also asked how this was influenced by language familiarity. Twenty-four native English perceivers heard two audio sentences in either English or Mandarin (an unfamiliar, non-native language), which sometimes differed in segmental or prosodic information (or both). Perceivers then saw a silent video of a talking face, and judged whether that video matched either the first or second audio sentence (or whether both sentences were the same). First, increased looking to the mouth predicted correct responses only for non-native language trials. Second, the start of a successful search for speech information in the mouth area was significantly delayed in non-native versus native trials, but just when there were only prosodic differences in the auditory sentences, and not when there were segmental differences. Third, (in correct trials) the saccade amplitude in native language trials was significantly greater than in non-native trials, indicating more intensely focused fixations in the latter. Taken together, these results suggest that mouth-looking was generally more evident when processing a non-native versus native language in all analyses, but fascinatingly, when measuring perceivers' latency to fixate the mouth, this language effect was largest in trials where only prosodic information was useful for the task.

Predicting Social Competence in Autistic and Non-Autistic Children: Effects of Prosody and the Amount of Speech Input.

Autistic individuals often face challenges perceiving and expressing emotions, potentially stemming from differences in speech prosody. Here we explore how autism diagnoses between groups, and measures of social competence within groups may be related to, first, children's speech characteristics (both prosodic features and amount of spontaneous speech), and second, to these two factors in mothers' speech to their children. Autistic (n = 21) and non-autistic (n = 18) children, aged 7-12 years, participated in a Lego-building task with their mothers, while conversational speech was recorded. Mean F0, pitch range, pitch variability, and amount of spontaneous speech were calculated for each child and their mother. The results indicated no differences in speech characteristics across autistic and non-autistic children, or across their mothers, suggesting that conversational context may have large effects on whether differences between autistic and non-autistic populations are found. However, variability in social competence within the group of non-autistic children (but not within autistic children) was predictive of children's mean F0, pitch range and pitch variability. The amount of spontaneous speech produced by mothers (but not their prosody) predicted their autistic children's social competence, which may suggest a heightened impact of scaffolding for mothers of autistic children. Together, results suggest complex interactions between context, social competence, and adaptive parenting strategies in driving prosodic differences in children's speech.

The role of intonation and context in lack of necessity meanings in negated deontic necessity modals in child Romanian

The current paper experimentally addresses the question of whether Romanian 5-year-olds interpret negated deontic necessity modals as interdiction initially, and to what extent intonation and situational context may act as cues for a more adult-like interpretation. We find that, in the absence of situational context, children initially interpret all negated deontic modals as interdiction. Prosodic cues are on their own not enough to lead to an adult interpretation. However, in the presence of situational context, children are able to tease lack of necessity and interdiction apart and even show sensitivity to prosodic differences among negated modals.

Focus-marking in a tonal language: Prosodic differences between Cantonese-speaking children with and without autism spectrum disorder.

Abnormal speech prosody has been widely reported in individuals with autism. Many studies on children and adults with autism spectrum disorder speaking a non-tonal language showed deficits in using prosodic cues to mark focus. However, focus marking by autistic children speaking a tonal language is rarely examined. Cantonese-speaking children may face additional difficulties because tonal languages require them to use prosodic cues to achieve multiple functions simultaneously such as lexical contrasting and focus marking. This study bridges this research gap by acoustically evaluating the use of Cantonese speech prosody to mark information structure by Cantonese-speaking children with and without autism spectrum disorder. We designed speech production tasks to elicit natural broad and narrow focus production among these children in sentences with different tone combinations. Acoustic correlates of prosodic focus marking like f0, duration and intensity of each syllable were analyzed to examine the effect of participant group, focus condition and lexical tones. Our results showed differences in focus marking patterns between Cantonese-speaking children with and without autism spectrum disorder. The autistic children not only showed insufficient on-focus expansion in terms of f0 range and duration when marking focus, but also produced less distinctive tone shapes in general. There was no evidence that the prosodic complexity (i.e. sentences with single tones or combinations of tones) significantly affected focus marking in these autistic children and their typically-developing (TD) peers.

Declarative intonation of Japanese-Spanish bilinguals in Spanish casual speech

This study presents an analysis of Spanish intonation produced by native speakers of Japanese. The analysis focuses on the nuclear configurations of 828 declarative tokens in the semi-spontaneous Spanish speech of 12 Japanese-Spanish bilingual speakers living in Valencia, Spain. Results of the analysis show that the speakers can produce the prosodic differences between two declarative utterance types that are differentiated in peninsular Spanish by pitch peak timing and final boundary contours. Specifically, the speakers of this study favored rising final boundary tones when maintaining their turn and the falling final contours for the end of turn. Results show interlanguage with greater variation in final contours and pitch peak placement than predicted. The study contributes to acoustic research on learner intonation by late bilinguals, particularly in a language contact situation involving an Asian language and romance language pair.

Poeter versus skådespelare i Dagens dikt 2020–2021

“Poets versus Actors Reading Poetry on Swedish Radio 2020–2021” Following the rise of the poet as the principal performer of his or her own work, in the second half of the 20th century, actors have been criticized for performing poetry as if acting on stage, or for focusing too much on conveying the lyric I. This primarily quantitative study investigates what prosodic differences there are between poets and actors reading poetry. The material consists of 276 readings from the Swedish public radio program Dagens dikt (The Daily Poem), from 2020 and 2021. A set of prosodic measures are produced for each recording with computational aid, and the groups are compared by using descriptive statistics. The differences found in terms of tempo and pausal patterns, though small, suggest that the actors read in a conventionally poetic, expressive style, while the poets are closer to a style typical of prose reading and conversational speech; this might be connected to differences between their respective repertoire – the poets reading newer, longer, and possibly more narrative texts. When it comes to pitch, there are more substantial differences: the poets are more monotonous and their tonal patterns more predictable, indicating a formal, less expressive style. These traits are associated with the highly stylized vocal cliché Poet Voice, which in turn is connected to poetological shifts in the last few decades. In both groups, however, younger individuals (born 1970 or later) and women, respectively, are the more monotonous and predictable; this might suggest a sociolinguistic trend not limited to poetry. Qualitative, close listening to a selection of readings largely confirms the findings of the quantitative investigation. While the frequently idiosyncratic poets tend to highlight form, such as rhythm and tonal repetitions, the actors rather try to convey the content of the poem, in accordance with prosodical and performative conventions.

Prosodic variation in intelligible L2-accented speech: Using acoustic measures to predict listening effort

Despite the relative ease with which listeners understand spoken language in their daily lives, speech perception is a complex task that becomes challenging in certain conditions, such as listening to speech in an unfamiliar second language (L2) accent. In the current study, we use pupillometry data from McLaughlin and Van Engen (2020) to ask whether prosodic variation predicts listening effort for L2-accented speech. In that study, L1 speakers listened to L1- and L2-accented English sentences. The pupillary response was larger for the L2-accented speech, even though it was fully intelligible. We hypothesize that prosodic differences in L2- versus L1- accented speech may account for such differences in listening effort for fully intelligible speech. To test this, we apply four acoustic measures to each of the stimuli used in the experiment. The first two measures, wiggliness and spaciousness (Wehrle et al., 2018), quantify the number and degree of F0 contour changes across each trial. The remaining two measures are relative word duration (Baker et al., 2009) and vowel pitch (Li & Shuai, 2011). We will use these trial level measures as fixed effects in Growth Curve Models to test the extent to which prosodic deviation predicts pupillary responses.

A profile of prosodic speech differences in individuals with autism spectrum disorder and first-degree relatives.

Impairments in prosody (e.g., intonation, stress) are among the most notable communication characteristics of individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and can significantly impact communicative interactions. Evidence suggests that differences in prosody may be evident among first-degree relatives of autistic individuals, indicating that genetic liability to ASD is expressed through prosodic variation, along with subclinical traits referred to as the broad autism phenotype (BAP). This study aimed to further characterize prosodic profiles associated with ASD and the BAP to better understand the clinical and etiologic significance of prosodic differences. Autistic individuals, their parents, and respective control groups completed the Profiling Elements of Prosody in Speech-Communication (PEPS-C), an assessment of receptive and expressive prosody. Responses to expressive subtests were further examined using acoustic analyses. Relationships between PEPS-C performance, acoustic measurements, and pragmatic language ability in conversation were assessed to understand how differences in prosody might contribute to broader ASD-related pragmatic profiles. In ASD, receptive prosody deficits were observed in contrastive stress. With regard to expressive prosody, both the ASD and ASD Parent groups exhibited reduced accuracy in imitation, lexical stress, and contrastive stress expression compared to respective control groups, though no acoustic differences were noted. In ASD and Control groups, lower accuracy across several PEPS-C subtests and acoustic measurements related to increased pragmatic language violations. In parents, acoustic measurements were tied to broader pragmatic language and personality traits of the BAP. Overlapping areas of expressive prosody differences were identified in ASD and parents, providing evidence that prosody is an important language-related ability that may be impacted by genetic risk of ASD.

Differences in speech articulatory timing and associations with pragmatic language ability in autism

BackgroundSpeech articulation difficulties have not traditionally been considered to be a feature of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). In contrast, speech prosodic differences have been widely reported in ASD, and may even be expressed in subtle form among clinically unaffected first-degree relatives, representing the expression of underlying genetic liability. Some evidence has challenged this traditional dichotomy, suggesting that differences in speech articulatory mechanisms may be evident in ASD, and potentially related to perceived prosodic differences. Clinical measurement of articulatory skills has traditionally been phoneme-based, rather than by acoustic measurement of motor control. Subtle differences in articulatory/motor control, prosodic characteristics (acoustic), and pragmatic language ability (linguistic) may each be contributors to differences perceived by listeners, but the interrelationship is unclear. In this study, we examined the articulatory aspects of this relationship, in speech samples from individuals with ASD and their parents during narration. MethodUsing Speechmark® analysis, we examined articulatory landmarks, fine-grained representations of articulatory timing as series of laryngeal and vocal-tract gestures pertaining to prosodic elements crucial for conveying pragmatic information. ResultsResults revealed articulatory timing differences in individuals with ASD but not their parents, suggesting that although potentially not influenced by broader genetic liability to ASD, subtle articulatory differences may indeed be evident in ASD as the recent literature indicates. A follow-up path analysis detected associations between articulatory timing differences and prosody, and subsequently, pragmatic language ability. ConclusionTogether, results suggest a complex relationship where subtle differences in articulatory timing may result in atypical acoustic signals, and serve as a distal mechanistic contributor to pragmatic language ability ASD.

한국어 “V1-어 V2” 구문의 운율

This article studies the prosody of the two kinds of “V1-e V2” constructions in Korean. In spite of their apparent identity, the “V1-e V2” constructions are divided into two different types on the basis of morphosyntactic and semantic criteria: verb-conjoined clause structures and compound verbs. A verb-conjoined clause structure conjoins two morphologically and syntactically independent verbs indicating two separate events (leading to semantic compositionality), while a compound verb carries an idiomatic meaning distinct from the meaning of the two component verbs in many cases. Previous studies have provided morphological, syntactic and semantic differences, which discriminate between the two kinds of “V1-e V2” constructions. This article identifies prosodic differences between the two constructions through a perception experiment. The experiment shows that there are indeed prosodic differences between the two constructions and that they are differentiated mainly in terms of the pause between the two conjoined/component verbs rather than the pitch contours superimposed on the given construction. Thus, this study provides empirical evidence of the two distinct “V1-e V2” constructions.

A prosodic comparison of two types of response tokens in Mandarin Chinese and English

We present an investigation of the phonetic characteristics of the response tokens yeah (English) and dui (Mandarin) which, in spoken conversation, can be used either as backchannel items (not initiating a new turn) or as reply tokens (taking the floor). On the basis of two telephone corpora, we investigate whether there are prosodic differences (specifically: pitch, duration, and intensity) between these two types of uses. We find that the most consistent prosodic cue that distinguishes the two, both in Mandarin and English, is intensity, with mixed results for pitch and no role for duration in either language. The pragmatic difference between a reply and a backchannel token is thus signalled by its position in the sequence but reinforced by prosodic means. The way in which this is achieved, i.e. by intensity, involves the cue that is the least likely to upset existing lexical contrasts, both in English and Mandarin.

Prosodic variation of English in Dominica, Grenada, and Trinidad

AbstractVarieties of English in the Caribbean have been claimed to have characteristic pitch patterns. However, there is little empirical research on prosodic aspects of English in the region. This paper provides a comparative phonetic analysis of several pitch parameters (pitch level, range, dynamism, rate of change, variability in rate of change, and tone rate) in English language data from Dominica, Grenada, and Trinidad that comprises read and spontaneous speech from 243 speakers. The results show that a wide pitch range and a high degree of variability in pitch, as mentioned in previous works, are not necessarily characteristic of English in the Caribbean overall, but that there are considerable cross‐territorial prosodic differences, with English in Trinidad showing more variability than in Dominica and Grenada, particularly among female speakers. Socioprosodic variation, largely specific to Trinidad, was also identified.

Utterance-Initial Prosodic Differences Between Statements and Questions in Infant-Directed Speech.

Cross-linguistically, statements and questions broadly differ in syntactic organization. To learn the syntactic properties of each sentence type, learners might first rely on non-syntactic information. This paper analyzed prosodic differences between infant-directed wh-questions and statements to determine what kinds of cues might be available. We predicted there would be a significant difference depending on the first words that appear in wh-questions (e.g., two closed-class words; meaning words from a category that rarely changes) compared to the variety of first words found in statements. We measured F0, duration, and intensity of the first two words in statements and wh-questions in naturalistic speech from 13 mother-child dyads in the Brent corpus of the CHILDES database. Results found larger differences between sentence-types when the second word was an open-class not a closed-class word, suggesting a relationship between prosodic and syntactic information in an utterance-initial position that infants may use to make sentence-type distinctions.

The prosodic marking of rhetorical questions in Standard Chinese

The present study investigates the prosody of information-seeking (ISQs) and rhetorical questions (RQs) in Standard Chinese, in polar and wh-questions. Like in other languages, ISQs and RQs in Standard Chinese can have the same surface structure, allowing for a direct prosodic comparison between illocution types (ISQ vs RQ). Since Standard Chinese has lexical tone, the use of f0 as a cue to illocution type may be restricted. We investigate the prosodic differences between ISQs and RQs as well as the interplay of prosodic cues to RQs. In terms of f0, results showed that RQs were lower in f0, with the f0 range on the first word being expanded followed by f0 compression. RQs were further longer in duration and more often realized with non-modal voice quality (glottalized voice) as compared to ISQs. These prosodic cues were largely manipulated in tandem (illocutionary pairs with larger durational differences also showed larger differences in mean f0; voice quality, in turn, seemed to be an additional cue). We suggest three possible explanations (assertive force, focus, speaker attitude) that unite the present findings on RQs in Standard Chinese with the findings on RQs in other, non-tonal languages.

Sociolectal and Dialectal Variation in Prosody.

As in many linguistics subfields, studies of prosody have mainly focused on majority languages and dialects and on speakers who hold power in social structures. The goal of this Special Issue is to diversify prosody research in terms of the languages and dialects being investigated, as well as the social structures that influence prosodic variation. The Special Issue brings together prosody researchers and researchers exploring sociological variation in prosody, with a focus on the prosody of marginalized dialects and on prosodic differences based on gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity. The papers in this volume don't just advance our understanding of critical issues in sociolinguistics, but they also challenge some of the received wisdom in the exploration of sociolinguistic influences on prosody. Not only does this collection highlight the value of this work to informing theories of prosodic variation and change, but the collected papers also provide examples of methodological innovations in the field that will be valuable for all prosody researchers.

MELODIC ORGANIZATION OF THE PREACHER'S SPEECH IN FILM DISCOURSE

The article is devoted to the study of the peculiarities of the melodic organization of monological expressions of preachers of different ranks - the characters of English-language feature films. Based on the fact that the preacher's speech functions are not limited to preaching from the pulpit, but include speeches outside the temple and private conversations with parishioners on spiritual topics, these three types of speech activities were studied. The research material, which consisted of oral English sermons, speeches and conversations taken from five modern films, was subjected to auditive, auditory and electroacoustic analysis. Auditive analysis involved the selection from the general text of those phrasal units that most clearly demonstrate the prosodic characteristics in all parts of the studied sermons, speeches and conversations. Auditory analysis was aimed at determining the type of spiritual speech and identifying the degree of participation of certain prosodic parameters (melodic contour, phrasal stress, volume, tempo, rhythm, pause) in the realization of the intention of speech and expression of emotions in different parts of the text. Based on the auditive analysis, firstly, the prosodic differences between the three speech realizations at the level of perception were confirmed, and secondly, it was found that the melodic component of intonation is the second most informative component involved in speech differentiation and enhancing its influential effect.The complex auditory and instrumental analysis of the melodic characteristics of the preachers’ speech allows to conclude that there are integral and distinctive melodic parameters inherent in the three types of speech behaviour of the speakers during the sermon, speeches outside the church and conversations with parishioners in private. The private priests’ conversation with parishioners is characterized by the lowest melodic indicators, where facial expressions and kinetic means of expressiveness and emotionality come to the fore.

Cross-linguistic patterns of speech prosodic differences in autism: A machine learning study.

Differences in speech prosody are a widely observed feature of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). However, it is unclear how prosodic differences in ASD manifest across different languages that demonstrate cross-linguistic variability in prosody. Using a supervised machine-learning analytic approach, we examined acoustic features relevant to rhythmic and intonational aspects of prosody derived from narrative samples elicited in English and Cantonese, two typologically and prosodically distinct languages. Our models revealed successful classification of ASD diagnosis using rhythm-relative features within and across both languages. Classification with intonation-relevant features was significant for English but not Cantonese. Results highlight differences in rhythm as a key prosodic feature impacted in ASD, and also demonstrate important variability in other prosodic properties that appear to be modulated by language-specific differences, such as intonation.

한국어 낭독과 자유 발화의 운율적 특성*

This study aims to clarify the prosodic differences in speech types by examining the Korean read speech and spontaneous speech in the Korean part of the L2 Korean Speech Corpus (speech corpus for Korean as a foreign language). To this end, the articulation length, articulation speed, pause length and frequency, and the average fundamental frequency values of sentences were set as variables and analyzed via statistical methodologies (<italic>t</italic>-test, correlation analysis, and regression analysis). The results found that read speech and spontaneous speech were structurally different in the form of prosodic phrases constituting each sentence and that the prosodic elements differentiating each speech type were articulation length, pause length, and pause frequency. The statistical results show that the correlation between articulation speed and articulation length was highest in read speech, explaining that the longer a given sentence is, the faster the speaker speaks. In spontaneous speech, however, the relationship between the articulation length and the pause frequency in a sentence was high. Overall, spontaneous speech produces more pauses because short intonation phrases are continuously built to make a sentence, and as a result, the sentence gets lengthened.

Prosodic Differences in the Voices of Transgender and Cisgender Women: Self-Perception of Voice - An Auditory and Acoustic Analysis

The voice is an important parameter for identifying the speaker's gender. Transgender people seek to adapt their bodies to gender identity, and transgender women have greater difficulties in achieving vocal acceptance. In this context, the evaluation of the various parameters of the voice of transgender and cisgender women is essential to make it possible to propose appropriate intervention measures. To identify the differences in vocal characteristics of transgender and cisgender women. An sectional study was conducted. The sample comprised 20 transgender women and 20 cisgender women who underwent evaluation of acoustic parameters, emotional prosody, self-perception, and perception of gender by lay listeners. The vocal characteristics of transgender and cisgender women differ in terms of the following parameters: f0, glottal noise excitation (GNE), vocal intensity, speech range profile (SRP), the first three formants of the vowel /a/, and in terms of emotional prosody, including duration and melodic contour. Higher values ​​were mostly found in the cisgender population, except for noise level and vocal intensity. In addition, in most cases lay listeners identified the voices of transgender women as belonging to the male gender. There was a negative correlation between vocal dissatisfaction and f0 among transgender women. Even though they perform vocal adjustments, the voices of transgender women are different from cisgender women in terms of acoustic parameters, vocal extension, and emotional prosody including duration and melodic contour. These differences have repercussions on the perception of gender by listeners.