Great Expectations - Introspective vs. Perceptual Prominence Ratings and their Acoustic Correlates

Wagner P. Great Expectations - Introspective vs. Perceptual Prominence Ratings and their Acoustic Correlates. In: Interspeech 2005. 2005: 2381-2384.In order to gain knowledge about the interaction between top-down expectations of listeners concerning prosodic prominence and its acoustic correlates, two exploratory empirical studies were carried out. First, native and non-native subjects rated prominences of speech read at normal and very fast - prosodically very different - speech. Later, these ratings were compared with introspective prominence ratings of different listeners. First results indicate a major influence of the introspection on prominence ratings, especially if acoustic cues are difficult to interpret, as it is the case in very fast speech. Compared to native subjects, non-natives rely less on their introspection and more on the acoustics

Prosodic prominence and contextual patterns: evidence from German

Schettino V, Wagner P. Prosodic prominence and contextual patterns: evidence from German. Presented at the ICPL 2015, Cologne

Great Expectations - Introspective vs. Perceptual Prominence Ratings and their Acoustic Correlates

Wagner P. Great Expectations - Introspective vs. Perceptual Prominence Ratings and their Acoustic Correlates. In: Interspeech 2005. 2005: 2381-2384.In order to gain knowledge about the interaction between top-down expectations of listeners concerning prosodic prominence and its acoustic correlates, two exploratory empirical studies were carried out. First, native and non-native subjects rated prominences of speech read at normal and very fast - prosodically very different - speech. Later, these ratings were compared with introspective prominence ratings of different listeners. First results indicate a major influence of the introspection on prominence ratings, especially if acoustic cues are difficult to interpret, as it is the case in very fast speech. Compared to native subjects, non-natives rely less on their introspection and more on the acoustics

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

Wortbetonung versus Satzakzent: eine Perzeptionsstudie zur Verständlichkeit prosodisch fehlerhafter Aussagen

Hey A. Wortbetonung versus Satzakzent: eine Perzeptionsstudie zur Verständlichkeit prosodisch fehlerhafter Aussagen. Bielefeld: Universität Bielefeld; 2017

Prosodie et contact de langues (le cas du système tonal du français centrafricain)

L objectif de cette étude est d apporter une contribution aux recherches portant sur les effets prosodiques du contact de langues à travers l étude du système prosodique du français centrafricain, une variété de français ayant émergé suite au contact avec une langue africaine à densité tonale maximale, le sango. La République centrafricaine est un pays extrêmement multilingue. Entre 60 et 100 langues y sont parlées, outre les deux langues officielles que constituent le sango lingua franca, et le français langue principale de l enseignement et de l administration publique. Dans la capitale, Bangui, le sango est la langue parlée d ordinaire dans la vie quotidienne, tandis que le français s utilise essentiellement dans des contextes professionnels. Cette étude se base sur des enregistrements de parole spontanée de 12 locuteurs francophones de Bangui. Des analyses acoustiques montrent que l intonation du français centrafricain partage des caractéristiques communes avec le sango. La majorité de mots ont des patrons tonals qui restent inchangés quel que soit leur place dans l énoncé, et chaque syllabe porte un ton. Le système se distingue ainsi considérablement du système intonatif du français européen où la courbe mélodique est contrainte au niveau post-lexical et dépend entre autres de facteurs rythmiques, syntaxiques et pragmatiques. La conclusion principale de cette étude est que le français centrafricain se classifie d un point de vue typologique comme une langue à tons lexicaux. Il ressort que le système prosodique du français centrafricain est plus proche de celui du sango et que de celui du français européen. Les faits mis au jour dans cette thèse montrent que la prosodie peut changer de façon fondamentale dans une situation de contact de langue.This study is concerned with prosody and language contact. The fact that language contact induces change is well documented, but few studies focus on the prosodic effects of contact-induced change. The aim of this study is to provide a case study of the prosodic system of the contact variety Central African French, which has emerged from the contact between French and the African tone language, Sango.The Central African Republic is a multilingual country with between 60 to 100 different regional languages spoken within its borders in addition to two official languages, the lingua franca Sango and French. French has been the main language of education and of public administration since colonial times. In the capital Bangui, Sango is the most used language in everyday communication whereas French is spoken in professional contexts. This study is based on recordings of spontaneous speech of 12 French-speaking informants from Bangui. Acoustic analyses of the recordings show that the prosody of Central African French shares with Sango some fundamental characteristics: most words have fixed tonal patterns independently of their position in the sentence and every syllable carries a static tone. This system greatly differs from the system of European varieties of French, where the sentence melody is determined at the post-lexical level and depends on factors such as rhythm, syntax and pragmatics. The main conclusion of this study is that Central African French may be classified as a tone language and thus is endowed with a prosodic system that is closer to Sango than to European French. This finding suggests that intonation might change radically in contact situations ; the change is not only superficial but concerns the underlying system.NANTERRE-PARIS10-Bib. élec. (920509901) / SudocSudocFranceF

Production, perception and online processing of prominence in the post-focal domain

This dissertation presents a fundamentally new and in-depth investigation of the distribution of prominence in different focal structures in two varieties of Italian (the one spoken in Udine and the one spoken in Bari), by means of the implementation of a categorical analysis with the continuous prosodic parameters related to F0 and periodic energy. Results provide evidence of the fact that prominence in these varieties of Italian is conveyed by both a categorical three-way distinction and a gradual modulation: absence or presence of pitch movement in the distinction between background (post-focal position) and the focal conditions, and a gradual modification of energy and duration. The degree of prominence of words occurring in different focal structures was also investigated in perception. The reportedly different distribution of prominence found in questions for the variety of Italian spoken in Bari is shown to have an influence in the degree of perceived prominence. This influence is found in the comparison between prominence’s ratings of Bari and Udine native speakers, as well as of Bari native speakers and German native speakers, with Italian as L2. Furthermore, the present dissertation tests the real-time processing of the pitch excursion registered in the post-focal region of questions in the Bari variety. Findings confirmed that the fine-grained changes in prominence are processed in real time. Moreover, results indicate that top-down expectations play a crucial role in modulating general cognitive processes. Overall, this thesis supports the view of prosodic prominence as characterised by a bundle of cues, probabilistically distributed in the listener’s perceptual space, which form top-down expectations that play a role both in offline perception and in online processing. Signal-based factors also play a role in perception and online processing, but can however be overridden by expectations