Intonational Variation Research Articles

Improving English Pronunciation Through Phonetics Instruction in Yemeni EFL Classrooms

The context of English education in Yemen provides a critical backdrop for comprehending the challenges Yemeni students face in acquiring proficiency in English pronunciation. These challenges are primarily rooted in the distinct differences between the Arabic and English sound systems, variations in syllable structure and intonation, and the influence of local dialects. Such factors are instrumental in identifying the obstacles Yemeni learners encounter in accurately articulating English phonemes. This research delves into the efficacy of phonetics instruction, specifically phonics training, in ameliorating English pronunciation skills among students in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) settings in Yemen. Employing a literature review methodology, this study meticulously collects and analyzes data from pertinent academic sources to assess the impact of phonics training on pronunciation proficiency. The findings reveal a significant enhancement in students' ability to correctly identify and articulate English phonemes, thereby improving their verbal interaction and comprehension skills, and bolstering their confidence in English communication. The contributions of this study are manifold. It illuminates the pivotal role of phonetics instruction in refining English pronunciation among EFL learners in Yemen, providing empirical evidence to support the integration of phonetic teaching within the EFL curriculum. Moreover, it advocates for the enrichment of educational resources and teacher development programs, emphasizing the importance of prioritizing English pronunciation in Yemen's English language education framework. Through its insights, this study not only addresses a critical gap in the literature but also proposes actionable recommendations to enhance the effectiveness of English pronunciation teaching in Yemeni EFL classrooms. In essence, this study underscores the transformative potential of phonics training in elevating the English language proficiency of Yemeni students, thereby contributing significantly to the broader discourse on language acquisition and pedagogy.

An exploratory study of intonational variation in L1 and L2 English speakers’ pragmatic production of high imposition requests and refusals

Abstract This exploratory study examined the intonational patterns and corresponding speech act strategies in L1 and L2 English speakers’ production of high imposition requests and refusals that were elicited using video-based multiple turn discourse completion tasks (DCTs). The participants, 34 L1 American English speakers and 14 high-proficiency L2 English speakers, recorded their oral responses to 10 multiple-turn video-based DCTs. Using Brazil’s (1997) framework, the collected speech samples were analyzed for tone choices in each tone unit. Pragmatic strategies in the produced speech acts were analyzed by adapting the existing coding frameworks (Beebe et al., 1990; Blum-Kulka et al., 1989). The extracted tone choices and lexico-mathematical strategies were compared between the two language groups. The results preliminarily revealed differences in the use of tones by L1 and L2 English speakers in performing requests and refusals. Moreover, while the employed speech act strategies were largely similar between the two speaker groups, the associated tone choices showed contrasting usage patterns.

Context effects on duration, fundamental frequency, and intonation in human-directed domestic cat meows

In this study, we investigated the prosody of domestic cat meows produced in different contexts. Prosodic cues – i.e., variation in intonation, duration, voice quality and fundamental frequency – in humans as well as in nonhuman animals carry information about idiosyncratic traits of the signaller, including sex, age, and physical and mental state. The duration, fundamental frequency (F0) and intonation in a sample of 969 meows recorded in seven different contexts (i.e., cuddle, door, food, greeting, lifting, play, cat carrier) were analysed using linear mixed effects regression and generalized additive models. In this, we controlled for cat age and sex, as meows produced by old cats had lower mean F0 than those produced by young cats, and female cats produced meows with higher mean F0 than male cats. We found significant effects of context on duration and mean F0, but not on F0 range. Furthermore, the results showed that the intonation of meows produced by cats in a cat carrier displayed a falling pattern, while that of meows produced in cuddle and door contexts was relatively level, and that of meows produced in the other contexts consisted of combinations of rising and falling. The average slope of meows produced in cat carrier and play contexts was negative, while that of meows produced in the other contexts was positive. We argue that this prosodic variation reflects the cats’ mental or emotional state, because of valence and arousal differences associated with the various contexts that were included in the study. Further studies will need to confirm this. In addition, we also plan additional analyses of spectral and voice quality parameters in meows and other cat vocalisation types.

A Hybrid Deep Learning Emotion Classification System Using Multimodal Data.

This paper proposes a hybrid deep learning emotion classification system (HDECS), a hybrid multimodal deep learning system designed for emotion classification in a specific national language. Emotion classification is important in diverse fields, including tailored corporate services, AI advancement, and more. Additionally, most sentiment classification techniques in speaking situations are based on a single modality: voice, conversational text, vital signs, etc. However, analyzing these data presents challenges because of the variations in vocal intonation, text structures, and the impact of external stimuli on physiological signals. Korean poses challenges in natural language processing, including subject omission and spacing issues. To overcome these challenges and enhance emotion classification performance, this paper presents a case study using Korean multimodal data. The case study model involves retraining two pretrained models, LSTM and CNN, until their predictions on the entire dataset reach an agreement rate exceeding 0.75. Predictions are used to generate emotional sentences appended to script data, which are further processed using BERT for final emotion prediction. The research result is evaluated by using categorical cross-entropy (CCE) to measure the difference between the model's predictions and actual labels, F1 score, and accuracy. According to the evaluation, the case model outperforms the existing KLUE/roBERTa model with improvements of 0.5 in CCE, 0.09 in accuracy, and 0.11 in F1 score. As a result, the HDECS is expected to perform well not only on Korean multimodal datasets but also on sentiment classification considering the speech characteristics of various languages and regions.

Folk Song "Sorrow After Sorrow" In The Works Of Borys Liatoshynsky: Intonation And Semantic Analysis

Relevance of research. Borys Lyatoshynsky (1895–1968) is one of the most outstanding composers of the last century. Many studies have been devoted to the study of his work in various aspects, although this topic remains incomplete and relevant. A manifestation of the composer's national thinking is, among other things, his use of folk melodies as the basis of thematism. A comparison of the composer's methods of working with folk song material in different genres has not yet been the subject of a special scientific study.
 The purpose of the study: to investigate the process of rethinking the folk song "Sorrow after Sorrow" in Lyatoshynsky's works, to consider and compare the principles of the composer's work on the folk melody in the genres of arrangement and symphony.
 Methods. The comparative, historical methods, as well as methods of genre-style, semantic and intonation analysis were used.
 The results and conclusions. The article analyses B. Liatoshynsky's approaches to working with folk song material using examples of works in which the composer refers to the folk song "Sorrow after Sorrow". The principles of processing this folklore sample in the genre of folk song arrangement for voice and piano are highlighted in the context of the evolution of the genre and in relation to the traditions established in Ukrainian music. The commonality of the basic methods of folk song arrangement in the works of M. Leontovych and B. Liatoshynsky is substantiated—the inviolability of the chant as a carrier of the intonation-semantic idea of the work, the usage of the latest compositional techniques of harmonic and textural variation, the development of the most expressive motifs in the accompanying voices or instrumental part, the construction of a through(endto-end) musical dramaturgy that pushes the limits of the original strophicity, the introduction of conceptuality and symphonic thinking into the genre. The place and role of the folk song melody "Sorrow after Sorrow" in the Third Symphony of B. Liatoshynsky is considered, the process of its involvement into the complex symphonic development is characterized: the inclusion of the theme into the leitmotif system of the symphonic cycle, the usage of intonational variation techniques, methods of timbral dramaturgy, polyphonic and motivic development in relation to the theme, due to which the theme appears in various figurative and emotional gradations, undergoes significant changes up to its transformation (the principle of monothemism).
 Conclusions are made regarding the continuity of the stages of working with the folklore primary source in the researched works of Liatoshynsky: in the genre of arrangement, a peculiar adaptation of the folk song sample to the field of academic music takes place, in the process of its compositional development, the intonational-semantic core—the motif of regret—is distinguished. At the next stage, this motif becomes the basis for a complex figurative and thematic development and author’s reinterpretation in works of other genres, an impetus for the implementation of significant symphonic concepts.

Prosodic realization and interpretation of English imperatives

Imperative clauses can communicate a number of speech acts, and differences in intonation have been argued to prompt different interpretations. So far, however, limited phonetic evidence has been presented for such proposals. The focus in the current work is on maximally strong imperatives (commands) and weaker imperatives (mainly involving advice) in English. We report on a series of phonetic experiments intended to address whether listeners reliably associate stronger and weaker imperatives with idealized intonation (Experiment 1) and whether speakers produce these two types of imperatives differently (Experiment 2). Individual variability in our production data led us to test whether listeners can map the variable pronunciation patterns found in Experiment 2 to stronger and weaker imperatives (Experiment 3), as they did with the idealized pronunciations in Experiment 1. Despite substantial cross-talker intonation variation, listeners’ stronger/weaker imperative recognition performance paralleled accuracy with the idealized productions. Analysis of the whole utterances indicates that speech rate and global pitch setting work along with the final intonation contour to signal semantic meaning in English imperatives. These results suggest that the mapping between meaning and form is complex and involves redundancy.

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A dialectometric approach to Romanian intonation

This paper presents the first dialectometric analysis of intonational variation of standard spoken Romanian. The data analysed (26,680 sentences) were gathered within the AMPER-ROM project and the dialectometrical analysis has been carried out with ProDis. The results are consistent with the geolinguistic descriptions of Romanian varieties. ProDis identified two major areas for yes-no questions: a central-eastern one (Moldo-Walachian), with rising contours, and a central-western one (Transylvanian, discontinuously continuing over Bukovina to Bessarabia—the Republic of Moldova—), which presents also falling contours. The study suggests that intonational areas are somehow more conservative of and (relatively) independent from segmental dialectal areas.

Language Contact, Language Ecology, and Intonational Variation in the Yami Community.

This study investigates socioprosodic variation in Yami, a moribund indigenous language under intense contact with Mandarin in Taiwan: 32 bilingual (Yami-dominant, balanced, Mandarin-dominant) and 5 Yami-monolingual participants were recruited. We used an Interactive Card Game to elicit semi-spontaneous speech for neutral questions (NQ), default declarative questions (DQ1), and declarative questions with lighter incredulity (DQ2). Results reveal that (1) yes/no question intonation in Yami is highly variable; (2) on a broad community level, the DQ1-DQ2 distinction is absent from Yami; and (3) there is prosodic hybridization and innovation in bilingual speech. In particular, we see significant differences in DQ1 and NQ productions, with DQ1s having a rising nuclear configuration, higher pitch level, and wider pitch span, while NQs are realized with a mid-level pattern, lower pitch level, and narrower pitch span. DQ2 utterances exhibited highly varied nuclear configuration patterns with no significant differences in either pitch level or pitch span in DQ1-DQ2 comparisons. Yet, there is evidence that a hybridized DQ2 has begun to be integrated into Yami among younger bilinguals, suggesting that present-day Yami is in flux and is undergoing restructuring.These intonational variations are not easily attributable to a weakened Yami identity. Rather, younger bilinguals, who are leading the change, are highly dedicated to cultural practices and show strong rootedness in their Indigenous identity. Seemingly, while these less fluent speakers no longer use Yami to fulfill their everyday communicative needs, they are leaning more on its socio-indexical functions to reflect their ethnocultural identity.

Intonations of Two Kuwaiti Dialects

Evidence of differences in intonation patterns among Arabic dialects is arising, along with known values of variation in supra-segmental typology. This study is a phonological and acoustic attempt to investigate the hypothesis of the occurrence of variation in the intonation of two Kuwaiti dialects—more specifically in the pitch of these two dialects, namely, the modern Kuwaiti dialect of Arabic and Kuwaiti Bedouin Arabic. The study investigates the effect of gender as well on the pitch levels. The study depends on spontaneous data collected through a series of recordings to identify the existence of intonation differences. The results of the study show that the pitch is generally higher in Kuwaiti Bedouin Arabic. In addition, the researchers found segmental differences, evident in vowels, more than consonants. The results could aid linguists in understanding differences in dialectal Arabic speech.

Dialect Identification using Chroma-Spectral Shape Features with Ensemble Technique

The present work proposes a text-independent dialect identification system. Generally, dialects of a language exhibit varying pronunciation styles followed in a specific geographical region. In this paper, chroma features familiar with music-related systems are employed for identification of dialects. In addition, eight significant spectral shape related features from short term spectra are computed and combined along with chroma features and named as chroma-spectral shape features. Chroma features try to aggregate spectral information and attempt to encapsulate the evidential variations, concerning timbre, correlated melody, rhythmic, and intonation patterns found prominently among dialects of few languages. The effectiveness of the proposed features and approach is evaluated on five prominent Kannada dialects spoken in Karnataka, India and internationally known standard Intonation Variation in English (IViE) dataset with nine British English dialects. Discriminative models such as, single classifier based Support Vector Machine (SVM) and ensemble based support vector machines (ESVM) are employed for classification. The proposed features have shown better performance over state-of-the-art i-vector features on both datasets. The highest recognition performance of 95.6% and 97.52% are achieved in the cases of Kannada and IViE dialect datasets respectively using ESVM. Proposed features have also demonstrated robust performance with small sized (limited data) audio clips even in noisy conditions.

Intonational variation in third party complaints in Spanish

Very little previous research has addressed the prosodic characteristics of third party complaints. This paper discusses an utterance and word level intonational analysis of this speech act in four speakers of Mexican Spanish. The effect of social distance/ power relationships was incorporated into the study by creating an experimental data elicitation task in which participants addressed identical complaints to a friend, as well as a boss, based on a series of hypothetical contexts. Major global findings revealed that all speakers significantly increased their fundamental frequency (F0) mean when directing their complaints to friends, however, only two speakers significantly expanded their F0 range in the same circumstance. Locally, peaks and valleys were manifested at significantly higher levels across the board when addressing friends. Finally, while speakers produced complaint contours of similar overall shape regardless of hearer, individual variation was present in the form of circumflex versus suppressed utterance-final F0 configurations. Overall, the relatively small data set initiated preliminary thoughts on the application of both cross-linguistic and language- and dialect-specific intonational concepts to complaints while also emphasizing the importance of relationships between interlocutors for future studies.

Intonational Variation in the North-West of England: The Origins of a Rising Contour in Liverpool.

This paper investigates intonation in the urban dialect of Liverpool, Scouse. Scouse is reported to be part of a group of dialects in the north of the UK where rising contours in declaratives are a traditional aspect of the dialect. This intonation is typologically unusual and has not been the subject of detailed previous research. Here, we present such an analysis in comparison with Manchester, a city less than 40 miles from Liverpool but with a noticeably different prosody. Our analysis confirms reports that rising contours are the most common realization for declaratives in Liverpool, specifically a low rise where final high pitch is not reached until the end of the phrase. Secondly, we consider the origin of declarative rises in Scouse with reference to the literature on new dialect formation. Our demographic analysis and review of previous work on relevant dialects suggests that declarative rises were not the majority variant when Scouse was formed but may have been adopted for facilitating communication in a diverse new community. We highlight this contribution of intonational data to research on phonological aspects of new dialect formation, which have largely considered segmental phonology or timing previously.

Fundamental Frequency and Regional Variation in Lifou French.

This study presents two experiments aimed at investigating tune-to-text alignment and pitch scaling in Lifou French, a variety spoken by bilingual speakers of French and Drehu. Descriptions of New Caledonian French have focussed on language use of European descendants or the variety spoken in the urban region, neglecting emergent varieties spoken by the indigenous population in rural areas, like the island Lifou. Due to the reduced inventory of pitch accents, dialectal variation in French intonation has proved to be difficult to detect, which has led to the assumption that French has a relatively homogeneous intonation system across its varieties. This study shows that fine-grained phonetic differences in speaking tempo and at the level of tonal alignment as well as in the scaling of AP-final peaks can be attributed to dialectal variation.

Intonational variation in Minorcan Catalan: Towards a prosodic change?

Sound variation and change at the suprasegmental level have been the object of a limited number of studies. Among them, the cases of intonational variation and change that cannot be attributed to language contact are very rare. This paper describes a case of intonational variation (which could possibly be the first stage of an ongoing intonational change) that is not due to language contact and that is observed on Minorca, a Catalan-speaking island in the Western Mediterranean. 158 speakers were recorded in 4 locations (two urban areas, a small town and a village). Speakers were male and female speakers belonging to two age groups (teenagers and adults). The corpus contains 1380 information-seeking yes-no questions collected by means of a Discourse Completion Task. Results show that while adult speakers seem to use only the traditional contour (as documented in several previous studies), teenagers in urban areas mostly use a yes-no question contour that differs from the tune used by adults. Teenage speakers in rural areas, on the other hand, still largely use the traditional yes-no question contour. The innovative contour has not been borrowed by other languages or dialects in contact with Minorcan Catalan, but was already in use in Minorcan Catalan with a different pragmatic function.

Estudo sociofonético do português falado na Amazônia: uma comparação interdialetal entre Belém e Macapá

Este artigo apresenta uma comparação interdialetal entre as variedades de Belém (PA) (BRITO, 2014) e Macapá (AP) Lemos (em andamento), com o objetivo de investigar a variação geoprosódica do português falado na Amazônia Oriental. Foram analisados vocábulos oxítonos presentes em sentenças declarativas neutras e interrogativas totais, com o intuito de observar a variação entoacional da frequência fundamental (F0) em posição nuclear dos enunciados. A análise tem como base a Sociofonética (THOMAS, 2011), uma vez que compreende uma análise acústica da fala dentro do contexto social dos informantes. Trata-se de uma pesquisa do projeto AMPER-Amazônia, vinculada ao AMPER-POR. O corpus analisado totalizou 432 dados (3 sentenças x 2 modalidades x 2 variedades x 3 repetições x 12 informantes). O tratamento dos dados abarcou seis etapas: codificação das repetições; isolamento, segmentação automática no PRAAT; aplicação do script no PRAAT; seleção das três melhores repetições e aplicação da interface MatLab. Os resultados deste inédito e relevante estudo revelaram características prosódicas nos falares de belenenses e macapaenses ao apontarem contornos prosódicos similares da F0, na sílaba tônica final nas duas modalidades analisadas, porém evidenciaram-se traços prosódicos mais regulares nas interrogativas totais.

Intonational variation and incrementality in listener judgments of ethnicity

The current study examines how listeners make gradient and variable ethnolinguistic judgments in an experimental context where the speaker’s identity is well-known. It features an open-guise experiment (Soukup, 2013) that assessed whether sociolinguistic judgments are subject to incrementality, with judgments increasing in magnitude as variable stimuli demonstrate more extreme differences. In particular, this task tested whether judgments of President Barack Obama as sounding ‘more’ or ‘less’ black (e.g., Alim & Smitherman, 2012) are sensitive to differences in intonation. Half of critical stimuli featured an L+H* pitch accent, which occurs more frequently in African American Language than in Mainstream U.S. English (Holliday, 2016). Four stimuli apiece were created from these phrases by making each pitch accent more extreme by semitone-based F0 steps. Seventy-nine listeners rated these stimuli via the question, “How black does Obama sound here?” Mixed-effects modeling indicated that listeners rated more phonetically extreme L+H* stimuli as sounding blacker, regardless of listener identity. A post-hoc analysis found that listeners attended to different voice quality features in L+H* stimuli. We discuss implications for research in intonation, ethnic identification, incrementality, language attitudes, and sociolinguistic awareness.

Inter- and intra-regional variation in intonation: An analysis of rising pitch accents and rootedness.

Regional linguistic variation is a widely known characteristic of American English, with the American South as one of the many foci. However, in much of this literature, Appalachia is lumped together with other Southern varieties. Further, the vast sociolinguistic literature has documented intra-regional variation along socio-indexical lines. However, most variation studies have focused on vocalic variation at the expense of other sources of variation, which may have different patterns and meanings. The present study was designed to explore intonational variation in conversational speech in two varieties of American English: Appalachian and Southern. Additionally, the intra-regional variation in intonation present in Appalachian English was explored considering the rootedness (local place-based attachment) of speakers. The results revealed significant effects of regional dialect on both the quantitative and qualitative realization of pitch accent. Further, intra-regional variation was significantly impacted by socio-indexical aspects, including rootedness, of individual speakers. The findings from this study demonstrate that both region and socio-indexical features are expressed intonationally and also provide motivation for additional exploration of intonational variation across and within the regional varieties of American English.

«Як научить байдужих відчувати? Як розбудити розум, що заснув?»

Modern receptive poetics encourages the study of verbalized end-to-end motives of Lesia Ukrainka’s work. Embodied in various linguistic forms – lexical-semantic, phrase-forming, syntactic-rhythmic and intonation, Lesia Ukrainka’s poetic texts testify to the change of the traditional dictionary of Ukrainian poetry, filling it with new associative connections, consistent with the needs of a particular historical era. Emphasis is placed on the connection of the word with music, not only formal, but also concretized in rhythms, syntactic and intonational variation of verse lines. The considered textual variants of the sonnet “Fantasy” convince in dynamism, originality of figurative-associative linguistic thinking of the poetess. The dynamics is traced in the textual representation of concepts фантазія, мрія, сон життя, in the symbolic meaning of the token камінь and вогонь, камінь and байдужість. Emphasis is placed on various forms of contrast expression – from antonyms, oxymorons, to opposing sentences-judgments. They are representatives of the logical and sensual content of Lesya Ukrainka’s poetic texts. On the example of evaluative significant words to the concept-token WORD as an instrument of poetic creativity, a conclusion about the antithetical thinking of the poetess is made. The dynamic perception of semantics is fixed вогонь, жар, пожежа, associated with a negative assessment of the destructive element, but in the poetic contexts of the author, these symbols are positively assessed as the ability to be a stimulus to creative inspiration, inflammatory, caring soul of the creator. Poetic phraseology to denote the concept of “indifference”, which acquires the meaning of linguistic and aesthetic sign in the Ukrainian language culture, is recorded.

Automatic dialect identification system for Kannada language using single and ensemble SVM algorithms

In this paper, an automatic dialect identification (ADI) system is proposed by extracting spectral and prosodic features for Kannada language. A new dialect dataset is collected from native speakers of Kannada language (A Dravidian language). This dataset includes five distinct dialects of Kannada language representing five geographical regions of Karnataka state. Investigation of the significance of spectral and prosodic variations on five Kannada dialects is carried out. Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs), spectral flux, and entropy are used as representatives of spectral features. Besides, pitch and energy features are extracted as representatives of prosodic parameters for identification of dialects. These raw feature vectors are further processed to get a new derived feature vectors by using statistical processing. In this paper, a single classifier based multi-class support vector machine (SVM) and multiple classifier based ensemble SVM (ESVM) techniques are employed for classification of dialects. The effectiveness and performance evaluation of the explored features are carried out on newly collected Kannada speech corpus, with five Kannada dialects and internationally known standard Intonation Variation in English (IViE) dataset with nine British English dialects. Experimental results have demonstrated that the derived feature vectors performs better when compared to raw feature vectors. However, ESVM technique has demonstrated better performance over a single SVM. Spectral and prosodic features have resulted individually with the dialect recognition performance of 83.12% and 44.52% respectively. Further, the complementary nature of both spectral and prosodic features is evaluated by combining both feature vectors for dialect recognition. However, an increase in dialect recognition performance of about 86.25% is observed. This indicates the existence of complementary dialect specific evidence with spectral and prosodic features. The experiments conducted on standard IViE corpus have shown a higher recognition rate of 91.38% using ESVM. Proposed ADI systems with derived features have shown better performance over the state-of-the-art i-vector feature based systems on both datasets.