Intonation and variation: the multiplicity of forms and senses

This work focuses on the multiplicity of forms which the intonation patterns may have and the multiple senses they express. The background for discussing these issues is vocal gestuality taken as an index of the biological, psychological and social characteristics of the speaker. The intonation sound patterns vary according to sociolinguistic features, dialect type and speech style and they are used to express modalities, regional and social characteristics, propositional and social attitudes and affective states. The intervening factors in the relation between form and meaning are numerous and they interfere with the perception of the intonation patterns. Results from acoustic and perceptual experiments in several languages are presented and their contribution to the study of the communicative functions and variability of intonation are discussed

A Review of Research on the Chinese EFL Learners’ Production of Linguistic Prosody in Turn Organization

Prosody features play crucial roles in the management and organization of conversations, among which turn-taking plays crucial roles in conversation organization. The appropriate use of prosodic features is an indispensable part of conversation strategies or skills, but the interaction between linguistic prosody and turn-taking is difficult to be acquired for EFL learners. This paper reviews the theoretical and empirical studies of interrelation between prosody and turn-taking, and the EFL learners’ acquisition of prosody in conversation organization in order to supply references for future studies in the similar fields

Assessment of Speech Prosody in Dysphonic Patients

The article is an attempt to organize the issues related to the diagnosis of prosodic skills in people with dysphonia. The tasks it deals with concern the features of prosodic characteristics of speech, mainly in relation to the Polish language, the functions performed by prosody in communication, the relationship of certain features of phonation to the speaker’s realisation of these functions and the disorders of their realisation in people with dysphonia. It also presents the methods and tools used in the description and evaluation of prosodic expression, which can be used in clinical practice.Artykuł stanowi próbę uporządkowania problematyki związanej z diagnozą sprawności prozodycznych u osób z dysfonią. Zagadnienia w nim poruszane dotyczą cech charakterystyki prozodycznej mowy, głównie w odniesieniu do języka polskiego, funkcji pełnionych przez prozodię w komunikacji, związku określonych cech fonacji z realizowaniem przez mówcę tych funkcji oraz zaburzeniami ich realizacji u osób z dysfonią. Wymieniono w nim również metody i narzędzia wykorzystywane w opisie i ocenie ekspresji prozodycznej, które można wykorzystać w praktyce klinicznej

Funkcije intonacije

Kod preglednih prikaza funkcija intonacije opravdano se stječe dojam da im je potrebno osvježenje, ako se u obzir uzmu spoznaje istraživanja prozodije autentičnih razgovora koja se koriste metodama etnometodološke ili etnografske analize. Nepostojanje opisa govornih radnji ili opisa funkcija upravljanja razgovorom, tj. funkcija njegova ustrojavanja, može se pripisati činjenici da se, unutar modela čiji se rezultati razmatraju u ovim prikazima, za analizu koriste i introspektivno tumače umjetno stvorene dekontekstualizirane rečenice. Ovaj je rad prikaz funkcija intonacije koji obuhvaća u preglednim prikazima ustaljene funkcije intonacije (isticanje, razlikovanje leksičkog značenja ili gramatičke kategorije, stvaranje cjelina), kao i njene funkcije spoznate zahvaljujući novijim istraživanjima prozodije autentičnih razgovora metodama etnometodološke ili etnografske analize (funkcija razlikovanja pragmatičkog značenja, tj. konstituiranja govorne radnje i funkcija određivanja uloga i odnosa u razgovorima)

Patterns of prominence, phrasing and tonal events in Spanish news reading : an illustrative case study

The present study examines the patterns in stress, phrasing and intonation found in a Spanish corpus of news read by broadcasters to describe the prosodic strategies that can be considered as genre-distinguishing features. Results indicate that, firstly, the main stress modifications concern the upgrading of unstressed syllables to accented ones, the stress shift to mark word-initial boundaries and the maintenance of adjacent stresses. Secondly, the special features related to phrasing are unexpected pauses, which enhance the prosodic units that offer new information, and the prosodic marking of initial edges of groups with the aim of capturing the listener's attention. Finally, the most relevant tonal events that identify the typical chanting of broadcasters are a recurrent use of rises whose f0 peak coincides with the stressed syllable, a variety of non-falling pitch movements signalling intermediate phrasing, and the use of rising-falling pitch movements to signal ends. All the described prosodic and tonal strategies contribute to obtaining an emphatic style in news reading and are representative of a prosodically marked genre.El presente estudio examina los patrones más comunes en la estructura acentual, la organización prosódica y la entonación en un corpus de noticias leído por profesionales de la radio con el fin de describir las estrategias prosódicas que pueden considerarse como rasgos diferenciadores de un estilo propio. La anotación perceptiva de los fenómenos prosódicos permite, en primer lugar, establecer las principales modificaciones acentuales, que tienen que ver con la acentuación de sílabas átonas, el cambio de posición de acento para marcar el inicio de palabra y el mantenimiento de acentos en sílabas contiguas. En segundo lugar, la singularidad en la organización prosódica se relaciona con la aparición de pausas no justificadas por criterios sintácticos ni prosódicos, pero que enmarcan las unidades que ofrecen nueva información, y el realce del inicio de los grupos prosódicos con el objetivo de atraer la atención del oyente. Finalmente, los eventos tonales más relevantes que identifican la locución de los locutores profesionales son: el uso recurrente de acentos tonales ascendentes cuyo máximo de f0 coincide con la sílaba acentuada, una gran variedad de tonos de trayectoria no descendente en el límite de frases intermedias, y el uso de tonos circunflejos al final de los enunciados de entonación. Las estrategias descritas contribuyen a conseguir un estilo enfático y son representativas de un estilo de habla con esquemas prosódicos propios

Pitch range impact on perception of affective valence in two age-groups of children

The ability to infer affective states is often key to success in communication. The sound cues present in speech, used by listeners for this purpose, are generally summarized under the term of affective prosody and pitch range is considered one of its most often studied acoustic correlates. Children's sensitivity to prosody seems to become inhibited around the preschool years. Certain studies report that children begin to make use of prosody again when they are around 9 years old. The goal of the present paper was to test these findings on young speakers of Czech and verify the general assumption, as many studies did, that affective valence corresponds with the value of width of pitch range. (eg. "happy" correlates with a wide range). The material for the experiment consisted of recordings of 8 sentences uttered by 2 speakers. The pitch range of these utterances was manipulated - expanded and narrowed. A perception experiment was carried out with 18 preschoolers and 20 school children. The respondents judged pairs of speaker utterances, one of which had an expanded range and the other a narrowed range. The children's task was to decide, which speaker "sounds happier" or which "sounds sadder" and reflect this choice by placing each speaker on an affective scale: negative - middle ground - positive....Schopnost inference afektivních stavů je pro úspěch komunikační situace často klíčová. Řečové podněty posluchači užívané pro tento účel bývají shrnovány pod pojmem afektivní prozodie, jejímž nejčastěji zkoumaným akustickým korelátem je intonační rozpětí. Citlivost dítěte na prozodii je zdánlivě oslabena okolo pátého roku života. Počátek opětovné orientace na prozodi bývá datován okolo devátého roku, kdy ji začíná dítě užívat k určování afektivních stavu. Cílem této práce bylo pokusit se potvrdit tento vývojový rozdíl na dětských mluvčích češtiny a ověřit předpoklad, že afektivní valence často koresponduje s šířkou intonačního rozpětí (např. radost koreluje s širším rozpětím). Materiál k experimentu tvořilo 8 promluv 2 mluvčích - ženy a muže, jejichž intonační rozpětí bylo manipulováno - expandováno a komprimováno. Experiment byl proveden na 18 předškolních a 20 školních dětech. Respondenti v percepčním testu hodnotili dvojici mluvčích, přičemž rozpětí promluvy jednoho z nich bylo expandované a rozpětí druhého z nich komprimované. Úkolem dítěte bylo rozhodnout o tom, který z mluvčích "zní veseleji" a který "zní smutněji", a umístit oba na afektivní škálu: negativní - střed - pozitivní. Hlavní hypotézou výzkumu bylo kromě přítomnosti vývojového rozdílu mezi věkovými skupinami také to, že promluvy s...Fonetický ústavInstitute of PhoneticsFilozofická fakultaFaculty of Art

Intonation structure and intonation in Svo and Ovs sentences in spoken Russian

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the difference between SVO and OVS sentences in spoken Russian, which is a language with flexible word order although the basic order is SVO. Two experiments were conducted to understand the nature of intonation. Experiment 1 shows that the Subject appears as kontrast in OVS sentences, and as background in SVO sentences. The F0 curve rises in the Object position when the Subject is kontrast in OVS sentences. The analysis of the results of Experiment 2 shows that the initial element of the sentence plays an important role in intonation. When it is kontrasted, it always has higher (Hz) frequency pitch accent than the final element. There is no difference between SVO and OVS sentences in this respect because the initial element has high pitch accent, whether it is the Subject or the Object. The verb has no pitch accent and it has a flat intonation regardless of the WO of the sentence (SVO, OVS).M.S. - Master of Scienc

A Study of Accomodation of Prosodic and Temporal Features in Spoken Dialogues in View of Speech Technology Applications

Inter-speaker accommodation is a well-known property of human speech and human interaction in general. Broadly it refers to the behavioural patterns of two (or more) interactants and the effect of the (verbal and non-verbal) behaviour of each to that of the other(s). Implementation of thisbehavior in spoken dialogue systems is desirable as an improvement on the naturalness of humanmachine interaction. However, traditional qualitative descriptions of accommodation phenomena do not provide sufficient information for such an implementation. Therefore, a quantitativedescription of inter-speaker accommodation is required. This thesis proposes a methodology of monitoring accommodation during a human or humancomputer dialogue, which utilizes a moving average filter over sequential frames for each speaker. These frames are time-aligned across the speakers, hence the name Time Aligned Moving Average (TAMA). Analysis of spontaneous human dialogue recordings by means of the TAMA methodology reveals ubiquitous accommodation of prosodic features (pitch, intensity and speech rate) across interlocutors, and allows for statistical (time series) modeling of the behaviour, in a way which is meaningful for implementation in spoken dialogue system (SDS) environments.In addition, a novel dialogue representation is proposed that provides an additional point of view to that of TAMA in monitoring accommodation of temporal features (inter-speaker pause length and overlap frequency). This representation is a percentage turn distribution of individual speakercontributions in a dialogue frame which circumvents strict attribution of speaker-turns, by considering both interlocutors as synchronously active. Both TAMA and turn distribution metrics indicate that correlation of average pause length and overlap frequency between speakers can be attributed to accommodation (a debated issue), and point to possible improvements in SDS “turntaking” behaviour. Although the findings of the prosodic and temporal analyses can directly inform SDS implementations, further work is required in order to describe inter-speaker accommodation sufficiently, as well as to develop an adequate testing platform for evaluating the magnitude ofperceived improvement in human-machine interaction. Therefore, this thesis constitutes a first step towards a convincingly useful implementation of accommodation in spoken dialogue systems