Sentence Accent Research Articles

Kann das doch weg? Zum Umgang mit der deutschen Abtönungspartikel doch beim Übersetzen literarischer Texte ins Albanische

In linguistics, the translatability of the German modal particles is considered a popular study object, particularly because of their rendering in “particle-poor” languages. Thus, the present study examines the translatability of the modal particle doch in Albanian literary texts. Compared to German language, Albanian does not have a group of modal particles and can, therefore, be classified as a “particle-poor” language. In general, (inter)subjective language elements in Albanian, such as modal particles in this case, come to a full meaning only in the context of use. Therefore, the translation must take the context into account. When translating from German to a particle-poor language, other means of expression, such as morphological, prosodic patterns, or a combination of these elements, available in the language are chosen to express the particular modal nuance. These expressions can also include contextual-pragmatic means and the use of extra-linguistic factors such as intonation, voice pitch, sentence accent, gestures, and facial expressions. This empirical corpus analysis is based on two novels: Franz Kafka’s “The Trial” (Der Prozess) and Hermann Hesse’s “Siddhartha - A Poem of India” (Siddhartha – eine indische Dichtung), and their two sets of translations into Albanian. Examining two translations of the same literary text allows for a better understanding of the lexical and syntactical means used in Albanian to render the modal particle doch. During the corpus analysis, the translation equivalents of doch in Albanian were extracted and classified into omission, transposition, paraphrasing, and word-for-word translations, based on the common translation-theoretical definitions. 

Acoustic Identification of Sentence Accent in Speakers with Dysarthria: Cross-Population Validation and Severity Related Patterns.

Dysprosody is a hallmark of dysarthria, which can affect the intelligibility and naturalness of speech. This includes sentence accent, which helps to draw listeners’ attention to important information in the message. Although some studies have investigated this feature, we currently lack properly validated automated procedures that can distinguish between subtle performance differences observed across speakers with dysarthria. This study aims for cross-population validation of a set of acoustic features that have previously been shown to correlate with sentence accent. In addition, the impact of dysarthria severity levels on sentence accent production is investigated. Two groups of adults were analysed (Dutch and English speakers). Fifty-eight participants with dysarthria and 30 healthy control participants (HCP) produced sentences with varying accent positions. All speech samples were evaluated perceptually and analysed acoustically with an algorithm that extracts ten meaningful prosodic features and allows a classification between accented and unaccented syllables based on a linear combination of these parameters. The data were statistically analysed using discriminant analysis. Within the Dutch and English dysarthric population, the algorithm correctly identified 82.8 and 91.9% of the accented target syllables, respectively, indicating that the capacity to discriminate between accented and unaccented syllables in a sentence is consistent with perceptual impressions. Moreover, different strategies for accent production across dysarthria severity levels could be demonstrated, which is an important step toward a better understanding of the nature of the deficit and the automatic classification of dysarthria severity using prosodic features.

Acoustic Identification of Sentence Accent in Speakers with Dysarthria: Cross-Population Validation and Severity Related Patterns

Acoustic Identification of Sentence Accent in Speakers with Dysarthria: Cross-Population Validation and Severity Related Patterns

„Geh ruhig“: Die Rolle der Prosodie bei der Auflösung von Ambiguitäten

Abstract Vocal pitch (also known as F0), pause and positioning of the sentence accent are closely related to the meaning of a statement. Although other elements of prosody can also be related to the meaning of the statement (e. g. timbre, speaking rate), in this paper only the three mentioned elements of prosody are considered in connection with the semantic interpretation. These three parameters are analyzed here individually or in connection with the meaning of potentially ambiguous statements in writing. In this way, the role of prosody in resolving ambiguities in written formulations is demonstrated, ambiguities that may lead to incorrect translations. The approach used for this research is „Analysis-by-introspection.” For better illustration of the differences in the meaning depending on the prosody, the translation method is used. Some translations come from the author of this paper; other translations are taken from some published books. For one or the other prosodic contour, semantic explanations are formulated. It is shown that prosodic topics play a major role in courses for foreign language learning, translation lessons and post-editing.

Acoustic features to characterize sentence accent production in dysarthric speech

This study investigated acoustic features and prosodic strategies used by both healthy speakers and speakers with dysarthria, to produce a perceptually-detectable sentence accent. Accordingly, 80 adult speakers (50 with a speech impairment) were asked to produce 3 pairs of sentences with different accent positions. All speech samples were perceptually judged by three experts, and were acoustically analyzed. The fundamental frequency, intensity, and duration were not only analyzed within the syllable, but also in contrast with the previous syllable, and in contrast with the entire sentence. These features were used as input for a linear discriminant analysis. This newly-developed acoustic approach reveals that healthy speakers mainly rely on the following features to produce a perceptually-detectable accent: a change in frequency within the target syllable, with a simultaneous increase of intensity and contrast in the frequency between the target syllable and the previous syllable. Speakers with dysarthria mainly use the contrast in frequency and intensity between the target syllable and the previous syllable, rather than the contrasting with the rest of the sentence. They also use durational parameters as an element in prosodic accent production. Although both groups use some common features, they differ significantly (p < 0.01) in the way they realize accent production. The results of this study show that sentence accent production in dysarthric speech can be adequately described by a set of acoustic features. Until now, such description in the literature was primarily based on perceptual evaluations. The current approach may assist in objective assessments and more appropriate therapy methods.

Acoustic features to characterize sentence accent production in dysarthric speech

Acoustic features to characterize sentence accent production in dysarthric speech

Cross-linguistic Influences on Sentence Accent Detection in Background Noise.

This paper investigates whether sentence accent detection in a non-native language is dependent on (relative) similarity between prosodic cues to accent between the non-native and the native language, and whether cross-linguistic differences in the use of local and more widely distributed (i.e., non-local) cues to sentence accent detection lead to differential effects of the presence of background noise on sentence accent detection in a non-native language. We compared Dutch, Finnish, and French non-native listeners of English, whose cueing and use of prosodic prominence is gradually further removed from English, and compared their results on a phoneme monitoring task in different levels of noise and a quiet condition to those of native listeners. Overall phoneme detection performance was high for the native and the non-native listeners, but deteriorated to the same extent in the presence of background noise. Crucially, relative similarity between the prosodic cues to sentence accent of one’s native language compared to that of a non-native language does not determine the ability to perceive and use sentence accent for speech perception in that non-native language. Moreover, proficiency in the non-native language is not a straightforward predictor of sentence accent perception performance, although high proficiency in a non-native language can seemingly overcome certain differences at the prosodic level between the native and non-native language. Instead, performance is determined by the extent to which listeners rely on local cues (English and Dutch) versus cues that are more distributed (Finnish and French), as more distributed cues survive the presence of background noise better.

Foreign accent in L2 Japanese: A cross-sectional study

The current study examines acoustic sources of foreign accent in second language Japanese produced by American learners across different instructional levels and learning backgrounds. Our prior work has demonstrated that pitch accent, vowel duration, and spectral information of the vowel [e] influence perceived foreign accent in Japanese short sentences produced by intermediate learners, with pitch accent exerting the strongest influence. Building on this prior finding, the current study examines Japanese produced by American learners at the beginning level (n = 10), at the intermediate level (n = 16), American learners who have had early exposure to Japanese (n = 10), native Japanese speakers (n = 10), and ratings of the speech samples by native Japanese listeners (n = 10) to investigate the difference in the extent of perceived accent in their speech and the acoustic sources that influence perceived accent. The results of the current study shed light on issues related to development of second language speech, and the perceptual relevance of the development to lay listeners.

Information Structure Preferences in Focus-Sensitive Ellipsis: How Defaults Persist.

We compare the roles of overt accent and default focus marking in processing ellipsis structures headed by focus-sensitive coordinators (such as Danielle couldn't pass the quiz, let alone the final/Kayla). In a small auditory corpus study of radio transcripts, we establish that such structures overwhelmingly occur with contrastive pitch accents on the correlate and remnant ( the quiz and the final, or Danielle and Kayla), and that there is a strong bias to pair the remnant with the most local plausible correlate in production. In two auditory naturalness ratings experiments, we observe that marking a non-local correlate with contrastive pitch accent moderates, but does not fully overturn, the bias for local correlates in comprehension. We propose that the locality preference is due to a sentence-final default position for sentence accent, and that auditory processing is subject to "enduring focus," in which default positions for focus continue to influence the focus structure of the sentence even in the presence of overt accents. The importance of these results for models of auditory processing and of the processing of remnants in ellipsis structures is discussed.

文アクセント : 意味論と音韻論の接点( 音声の対照研究)

文アクセント : 意味論と音韻論の接点( 音声の対照研究)

Co-articulatory Cues for Communication: An Investigation of Five Environments

We hypothesized that speakers adjust co-articulation in vowel–consonant (VC) sequences in order to provide listeners with enhanced perceptual cues to C, and that they do so specifically in those situations where primary cues to C place of articulation tend to be diminished. We tested this hypothesis in a speech production study of American English, measuring the duration and extent of VC formant transitions in five conditioning environments – consonant voicing, phrasal position, sentence accent, vowel quality, and consonant place – that modulate primary cues to C place in different ways. Results partially support our hypothesis. Although speakers did not exhibit greater temporal co-articulation in contexts that tend to diminish place cues, they did exhibit greater spatial co-articulation. This finding suggests that co-articulation serves specific communicative goals.

Logical and Sentence Accent in Informational Texts

Straipsnis skirtas sakinių, vartojamų informaciniuose tekstuose – žinių laidų pranesimuose – struktūrai, intonacijai, aktualiajai skaidai aptarti, frazės ir loginio kircio skirtumams nusakyti ir santykiui isryskinti. Tyrimas parodė, kad informaciniuose tekstuose, žiūrint sandaros, vyrauja vientisiniai dvinariai asmeniniai sakiniai ir, žiūrint pasakymo tikslo, – tiesioginiai sakiniai. Vientisiniai sakiniai yra gana ilgi, isplėstiniai. Informatyvioji sakinio (frazės) dalis – rema būna sakinio gale, po temos. Tiesioginiams sakiniams būdingas kylantis-krintantis intonacijos modelis. Frazės kirciu isskiriamas paskutinis žodis. Sis kirtis yra neutralus, automatizuotas. Loginis kirtis dažniausiai atlieka kontrasto funkciją: prasmiskai isryskina aktualiausią turinio dalyką. Jis yra nefiksuotas. Frazės ir loginio kircio įprastinė vieta – informatyvioji, reminė, sakinio dalis. Esminiai žodžiai: frazės kirtis, loginis kirtis, informacinis tekstas (žanras), sakinys, frazė, intonacija, aktualioji sakinio skaida DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15823/zz.2015.3

Argument-focus and predicate-focus structure in Ancient Greek

In this article, Ancient Greek is shown to allow two word orders, Focus-Verb and Verb-Focus, independently of whether the verb is in focus or in the presupposition. Relying on the behavior of postpositives and Lambrecht’s Principle of Accent Projection, I argue that such word orders are integrated into prosodic constituents where the main sentence accent falls to either the left (Focus-Verb) or the right (Verb-Focus) of the verb. Such an alternation is suggested to be due to a binary iconic contrast whereby the more prominent the focus is, the earlier it is placed.

Deaccentuation in Dutch as a second language

A non-native accent in a second language is usually not restricted to the segmental domain — consonants and vowels — but is also noticeable in the suprasegmental domain, which includes phenomena such as word stress and sentence accent. The central question in this paper is whether advanced non-native speakers of Dutch produce pitch accent errors as a result of deaccentuation of given information in ‘verum focus’ sentences (‘… but I don’t READ books’). We expected the correct position of the pitch accent to be problematic for speakers with a non-Germanic mother tongue (L1) as compared to speakers with a Germanic L1. Non-native speakers of Dutch with Hungarian or German as L1 and a control group of native Dutch speakers read aloud a text containing a number of verum focus sentences. The results reveal that the Hungarian speakers tend to focus the negation, while the German speakers of Dutch as a second language highlight the finite verb, just as the native speakers do.

German sentence accents and embedded prosodic phrases

This paper proposes a new approach to German sentence accent assignment and intonational patterns using embedded prosodic domains. The concept of embeddedness is restricted to prosodic domains embedding and differs from Cinque's (1993) syntactic embeddedness. It is shown that both syntax and prosody play a role in sentence accents. Prosodic domains are projected from syntax, and every syntactic maximal projection is mapped into its own domain. However, some peculiarities of sentence accents are better accounted for in terms of prosodic structure itself. I propose extending the phenomenon called ‘integration’, which up to now has been exclusively applied to a sequence of argument and predicate: the head of a phrase can be at the same time the head of a larger phrase containing it. In this new account, integration is a prosodic phenomenon and it applies to a larger set of cases than assumed so far. It is shown that an OT account making use of a few well-motivated constraints can explain the default (unmarked) accent pattern, as well as a large number of more complicated data.

Oor die onstabiele klemtoongedrag van Afrikaanse reduplikasies

This is a report on an investigation into the stress behaviour of Afrikaans reduplications in terms of preference for which member is stressed. Previous studies of Afrikaans either maintain that the two members of reduplications are identically stressed (Botha, 1988; Combrink, 1990; Conradie, 2004; De Villiers, 1983; Kempen, 1962, 1969; Ponelis, 1993; Raidt, 1981; Scholtz, 1963), or that the first member predominantly receives stress (Van Huyssteen & Wissing, 2007). The experiment from which the findings are deduced entails the analysis of 841 vowels (all of them the phoneme /A/) read in twenty-one reduplications by six Afrikaans-speaking persons, three of each gender. The reduplications were embedded in a set of carrier sentences and another set of natural sentences, all of them in comparable sentence accent positions. Participants first had to read a block of carrier sentences, then a block consisting of natural sentences, and finally a repetition of the first block of carrier sentences. In the case of all six, the readers’ reduplications in natural sentences mainly received stress on the first member, which is a corroboration of the findings of Van Huyssteen and Wissing (2007). In contrast to this, some readers (three of the six) preferred second-syllable stress when it came to carrier sentences. Noteworthy is that these readers thus exhibited a strange pattern of mainly stressing the second syllables in the first block of readings (i.e. carrier sentences); then switched to first syllables in the second block (natural sentences), and returned to stressing second syllables in the third block of readings (again carrier sentences). The other three exhibited a diverse pattern, albeit in all cases in a systematic way. In the present study it clearly emerged that stress assignment in reduplications is largely sensitive to the type of reading task being used. This, of course, spells caution for not too easily jumping to conclusions based on one mode type only, as done by Van Huyssteen and Wissing (2007). This could very well be the case in other, related studies as well. The results have shown positively that both inter- and intra-personal command of stress placement in reduplications are to be taken into consideration. In view of the abovementioned findings of this study, the unstable character of reduplications in Afrikaans seems to be apparent. This is in sharp contrast to the very steady pattern of stress placement in Afrikaans reduplications. This, perhaps, is the most convincing evidence in favour of acknowledging reduplications as a grammatical construction type, separate from compounds, for instance—at least in the case of Afrikaans. Finally, the use of auditory cues in stress placement judgement correlated highly with acoustic measurements, which could serve as strong support for this working method.

Acoustic and laryngographic measures of the laryngeal reflexes of linguistic prominence and vocal effort in German

This study uses acoustic and physiological measures to compare laryngeal reflexes of global changes in vocal effort to the effects of modulating such aspects of linguistic prominence as sentence accent, induced by focus variation, and word stress. Seven speakers were recorded by using a laryngograph. The laryngographic pulses were preprocessed to normalize time and amplitude. The laryngographic pulse shape was quantified using open and skewness quotients and also by applying a functional version of the principal component analysis. Acoustic measures included the acoustic open quotient and spectral balance in the vowel /e/ during the test syllable. The open quotient and the laryngographic pulse shape indicated a significantly shorter open phase for loud speech than for soft speech. Similar results were found for lexical stress, suggesting that lexical stress and loud speech are produced with a similar voice source mechanism. Stressed syllables were distinguished from unstressed syllables by their open phase and pulse shape, even in the absence of sentence accent. Evidence for laryngeal involvement in signaling focus, independent of fundamental frequency changes, was not as consistent across speakers. Acoustic results on various spectral balance measures were generally much less consistent compared to results from laryngographic data.

Gevorderde akoestiese korrelate van Afrikaanse klemtoon

In Wissing (2007) an investigation was conducted into the traditional stress parameters of Afrikaans (fundamental frequency, intensity, duration and vowel quality). In the present study the focus is on a number of less well-known, as well as some totally new parameters. The former set of parameters was taken over from the influential work of Sluijter and Van Heuven (1996a) on Dutch stress. The rest are deducted from general descriptions of the process of phonation, in particular during the stressing of syllables/vowels. An example of the former group of parameters is F0 gradient. Sluijter and Van Heuven (1996a) describe this in terms of F0 movement. The latter refers to parameters such as the starting and end points of such F0 gradient, as well as those of intensity and vowel formant moves. Results reported by Sluijter and Van Heuven (1996a) in the case of Dutch are contradicted by the current finding that accent-lending F0 movement is restricted to sentence accent contexts. Important results include the support of one of the main findings of Sluijter and Van Heuven (1996a), namely the necessity of taking into account the specific word and sentence contexts when analysing stress parameters. Linguistic stress has to be distinguished from sentence accent. A specific property of accent is that it normally enhances the manifestation of stress. This is true for most of the acoustic correlates under scrutiny in this study. Sluijter and Van Heuven (1996a) found that BdF_2, that is intensity located in the spectral region of 2 kHz to 5 kHz, proved to be a better indicator of stress than overall intensity (i.e. the whole spectrum, from 0 Hz to 5000 Hz). This finding of theirs was supported in the case of Afrikaans /A/. Of the new parameters, the gradient of F1, and in particular the end point of F1, seem to be powerful instruments in describing vowel reduction as a phonological process. As a result, unstressed /A/ tends to shift in the direction of schwa (/@/). This is evident from the F1 readings (cf. Wissing, 2007), but even more so, from the gradient and end point of F1. Harmonicity-to-Noise Ratio is a parameter we stumbled on by accident. Although this is not one of the most powerful parameters in comparing stressed with unstressed vowels, in most contexts the difference found in such comparison turned out to be of practical significance. The same goes, albeit to a much lesser degree, for the bandwidths of the first three vowel formants. When all of the parameters considered in both studies on the acoustic correlates of stress in Afrikaans were pooled in one comprehensive cluster — consisting of 24 parameters in all — the success rate was lifted considerably. It is recommended that, in the realm of speech technology, such a total cluster should be used for detection of stressed vowels. This is particularly the case with grapheme-to-phoneme converters.

A Semantic Analysis of Sentence Accent Assignment in English

L'A. suggere que les phenomenes prosodiques a l'interieur d'un domaine de focus large sont a considerer aussi bien d'un point de vue semantique que d'un point de vue syntaxique. Son analyse semantique concernant l'affectation d'un accent dans la phrase en anglais, presente une distinction entre action et non action qui regularise l'accentuation des predicats intransitifs anglais dans les phrases informatives enoncees avec des emotions neutres. Il propose une regle d'affectation d'un accent ascendant, ayant le statut de la regle de correspondance conceptuelle-phonologique dans le sens de la theorie semantique de Jackendoff

Basiese akoestiese korrelate van klemtoon in Afrikaans

This experimental study on the acoustic correlates of stress in Afrikaans, more in particular the stress of bisyllabic Afrikaans compounds, focuses on three aims. Firstly the aim was to establish to what extent the traditionally accepted features of syllabic stress, in particular vowel stress (especially in the case of the Germanic languages) are relevant for Afrikaans too. These features are vowel length (or duration, measured in seconds), loudness (or intensity, measured in Decibels), pitch (or fundamental frequency) and vowel quality (structure of Formant 1–3). Pitch and vowel quality are both measured in Hertz. Secondly, a detailed description of these features is presented. Lastly, a possible rank order hierarchy was considered for these features in terms of their relative contribution to the manifestation of stress in Afrikaans. It seems to be difficult to establish a specific, rigid rank order for the parameters under scrutiny. What does become clear from the results of this study is that parameters' relative strengths vary from context to context. In some cases a parameter could be very strong, but in others rather weak. Moreover, the viability of establishing such rank orders is uncertain. The findings of Sluijter en van Heuven (1996) concerning stress in Dutch are endorsed to a large extent. Specifically, vowels in accented (or focus) position in a sentence exhibit distinctly different characteristics in their acoustic features when compared with vowels outside of such prominent positions. Initial syllable stress for Afrikaans bisyllabic compounds was found to be the default position in all cases analysed. A special finding of this project is that vowel quality, expressed in terms of formant structure, plays an important role in the manifestation of stress. On the other hand, the absence of stress noticeably leads to vowel reduction, which is expressed in terms of the formant structure chance of /A/, the vowel under scrutiny in this study. Collaboration between sentence accent and syllable position has been proved to be the optimal environment for the expression of linguistic stress. This is a new perspective on the topic of stress. Sluijter en Van Heuven (1996) did not mention this facet in their studies on Dutch accent and stress. Stress on the initial syllable of Afrikaans bisyllabic compound words has been confirmed throughout the study as default position.