短语切分、重点突出与形态声调学：永宁摩梭话的语句如何形成声调组

International audienceYongning Na is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken in an area straddling the border between Yunnan and Sichuan. The Yongning Na tone system is based on three levels: L, M, and H. It comprises a host of rules that are specific to certain morphosyntactic contexts. These rules represent the bulk of what language learners must acquire to master the tone system. Different rules apply in the association of a verb with a subject or an object, the association of two nouns into a compound, that of a numeral and classifier, and that of a word and its affixes, for instance. The domain of tonal computation is referred to here as the tone group; tonal processes never apply across tone-group junctures. The present study investigates how utterances are divided into tone groups in Yongning Na, building on examples from narratives and elicited combinations. There is no hard-and-fast correspondence between syntactic structure and tone group divisions: several options are generally open for the division of an utterance into tone groups. The choice among these options depends on considerations of information structure. This study is intended as a stepping-stone towards the long-term goal of modelling the Na tonal system (its morpho-phonology and its phonetics), and placing the findings in a typological perspective.永宁摩梭话（纳语）是汉藏语族纳语组的一种语言，位于云南跟四川交界地带的永宁坝与泸沽湖地区。永宁纳语的声调系统有高、中、低三个调域。本文介绍和分析纳语中的语句如何被划分为“声调组”。选择何种声调组往往反映了语句不同的信息结构。由于句法结构跟声调组的切分没有硬性直接的对应，说话人可以选择将一个大的组块整合为一个声调组，从而形成强整合，或者也可以把语句分成一些声调组，加强不同成分的风格效应。论文用详细的例子展示了在语句分为声调组的过程中说话人选择某种变调类型的动机。结构越紧密的语句，其可能划分的声调组就越少。而当出现富于表现力的或较生动的某个词时，句子便会用声调来切分

Prosodic phrase break prediction: problems in the evaluation of models against a gold standard

The goal of automatic phrase break prediction is to identify prosodic-syntactic boundaries in text which correspond to the way a native speaker might process or chunk that same text as speech. This is treated as a classification task in machine learning and output predictions from language models are evaluated against a ‘gold standard’: human-labelled prosodic phrase break annotations in transcriptions of recorded speech - the speech corpus. Despite the introduction of rigorous metrics such as precision and recall, the evaluation of phrase break models is still problematic because prosody is inherently variable; morphosyntactic analysis and prosodic annotations for a given text are not representative of the range of parsing and phrasing strategies available to, and exhibited by, native speakers. This article recommends creating automatically-generated POS tagged and prosodically annotated variants of a text to enrich the gold standard and enable more robust ‘noise-tolerant’ evaluation of language models

Information Structure in Asia: Yongning Na (Sino-Tibetan) and Vietnamese (Austroasiatic)

International audienceLanguages of Asia are highly diverse. Rather than attempting a review of the literature about information structure in this huge linguistic area, this chapter provides observations about two languages that differ sharply in terms of how they convey information structure. Yongning Na (Sino-Tibetan) is an example of a language with abundant morphemes expressing information structure, whereas Vietnamese (Austroasiatic) makes little use of such morphemes. Along with key morphosyntactic facts, this chapter presents the role played by intonation in conveying information structure in these two tonal languages

Acoustic Correlates of Prosodic Boundaries in French A Review of Corpus Data / Correlatos acústicos de fronteiras prosódicas em francês: uma revisão de dados de corpora

Abstract: In this article we investigate the acoustic correlates of prosodic boundaries in French speech. We compare the prosodic structure annotation performed by experts in two multi-genre corpora (Rhapsodie and LOCAS-F). A uniform analysis procedure is applied to both corpora. The results show that the main acoustic correlates of prosodic boundaries are silent pauses and pre-boundary syllable lengthening. Pitch movements contribute to the perception of boundaries but are essentially correlates of boundary function, rather than boundary strength. Two levels of four-level annotation of boundary strength in the Rhapsodie corpus (periods and packages) correspond to the two-levels of strength in the LOCAS-F corpus. Keywords: prosody; speech segmentation; prosodic boundaries; corpus linguistics; French. Resumo: Neste artigo investigamos os correlatos acústicos de fronteiras prosódicas da fala em língua francesa. Comparamos a anotação da estrutura prosódica efetuada por anotadores experts em dois corpora multigêneros (Rhapsodie e LOCAS-F). Um procedimento de análise uniforme é aplicado a ambos os corpora. Os resultados indicam que os principais correlatos acústicos de fronteiras prosódicas são pausa silenciosa e alongamento da sílaba pré-fronteira. Movimentos de pitch contribuem para a percepção de fronteiras mas são essencialmente correlatos de funções de fronteira, e não de força de fronteira. Dois dos níveis de anotação dos quatro níveis de anotação de força de fronteira do corpus Rhapsodie (períodos e pacotes) correspondem aos dois níveis de intensidade do corpus LOCAS-F. Palavras-chave: prosódia; segmentação da fala; fronteiras prosódicas; linguística de corpus; francês

Organisation of Japanese prosody

This thesis is an experimental phonological study of pitch in Tokyo Japanese. It comprises five chapters all discussing prosodic processes and phenomena relating to accent, tone or intonation on the basis of experimental evidence. The discussion in each chapter is developed essentially in the following three steps: (i) a critical review or overview of the past work on the subject discussed in the chapter or section; (ii) presentation of new evidence mostly from instrumental experiments; (iii) a discussion of the experimental evidence in theoretical contexts. After outlining the nature and function of word accent in Chapter One, I discuss in Chapter Two the prosodic compound formation process which has traditionally been described as an accent (re)assignment process. I analyze the linguistic structures of those compounds which are not subject to the compound accent rules, and propose several factors which constrain the prosodic compound formation process, defining them as the linguistic conditions on the process. Chapters Three through Five deal with word accent in a wider context of speech, discussing its roles, behavior and phonetic realization in phrase or sentence perspective. Chapter Three discusses the phonetics and phonology of 'accentual fall, ' 'accentual boost' and 'accent clash, ' for each of which the fallacies underlying the impressionistic descriptions in the literature are demonstrated. Four discusses various problems relating to intonational phrases and phrasing. The first part of the chapter focuses on the definition of the two intonational phrases, 'major phrase' and 'minor phrase' while the second part of the chapter explores the linguistic conditions on 'minor phrase formation, ' the intonational phrasing process whereby two or more syntactic/morphological units are combined to form one minor intonational phrase. Chapter Five examines the linguistic structure of 'downtrend, ' the phenomenon whereby pitch declines during the course of utterances. It is shown in the first part of the chapter that Poser's 'catathesis' (downstep) model is a largely adequate model of the intonational phenomenon. After confirming that the trigger of the downtrend phenomenon is largely attributable to accent, it is shown in the second part of the chapter that this accent-triggered process varies considerably depending on the syntactic structure of the phrase or sentence involved, or, in other words, that the configuration of downstep serves to disambiguate otherwise ambiguous syntactic structures. In the course of discussing the specific topics just mentioned, several more general theoretical issues are addressed, including the following four topics: the relation between syntactic structure and phonological structure; the organization of rhythmic structure; the abstractness of phonological (tonal) representation; and the nature of phonetic realization rules

The SP2 SCOPES Project on Speech Prosody

This is an overview of a Joint Research Project within the Scientific co-operation between Eastern Europe and Switzerland (SCOPES) Program of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNFS) and Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). Within the SP2 SCOPES Project on Speech Prosody, in the course of the following two years, the four partners aim to collaborate on the subject of speech prosody and advance the extraction, processing, modeling and transfer of prosody for a large portfolio of European languages: French, German, Italian, English, Hungarian, Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, Montenegrin, and Macedonian. Through the intertwined four research plans, synergies are foreseen to emerge that will build a foundation for submitting strong joint proposals for EU funding

Rapid neural processing of grammatical tone in second language learners

The present dissertation investigates how beginner learners process grammatical tone in a second language and whether their processing is influenced by phonological transfer. Paper I focuses on the acquisition of Swedish grammatical tone by beginner learners from a non-tonal language, German. Results show that non-tonal beginner learners do not process the grammatical regularities of the tones but rather treat them akin to piano tones. A rightwards-going spread of activity in response to pitch difference in Swedish tones possibly indicates a process of tone sensitisation. Papers II to IV investigate how artificial grammatical tone, taught in a word-picture association paradigm, is acquired by German and Swedish learners. The results of paper II show that interspersed mismatches between grammatical tone and picture referents evoke an N400 only for the Swedish learners. Both learner groups produce N400 responses to picture mismatches related to grammatically meaningful vowel changes. While mismatch detection quickly reaches high accuracy rates, tone mismatches are least accurately and most slowly detected in both learner groups. For processing of the grammatical L2 words outside of mismatch contexts, the results of paper III reveal early, preconscious and late, conscious processing in the Swedish learner group within 20 minutes of acquisition (word recognition component, ELAN, LAN, P600). German learners only produce late responses: a P600 within 20 minutes and a LAN after sleep consolidation. The surprisingly rapid emergence of early grammatical ERP components (ELAN, LAN) is attributed to less resource-heavy processing outside of violation contexts. Results of paper IV, finally, indicate that memory trace formation, as visible in the word recognition component at ~50 ms, is only possible at the highest level of formal and functional similarity, that is, for words with falling tone in Swedish participants. Together, the findings emphasise the importance of phonological transfer in the initial stages of second language acquisition and suggest that the earlier the processing, the more important the impact of phonological transfer

Is cue-based memory retrieval \u27good-enough\u27?: Agreement, comprehension, and implicit prosody in native and bilingual speakers of English

This dissertation focuses on structural and prosodic effects during reading, examining their influence on agreement processing and comprehension in native English (L1) and Spanish-English bilingual (L2) speakers. I consolidate research from three distinct areas of inquiry\u27cognitive processing models, development of reading fluency, and L1/L2 processing strategies\u27and outline a cohesive and comprehensive processing model that can be applied to speakers regardless of language profile. This model is characterized by three critical components: a cognitive model of memory retrieval, a processing paradigm that outlines how resources may be deployed online, and the role of factors such as prosody in parsing decisions. The general framework of this integrated \u27Good-enough Cue\u27 (GC) model assumes the \u27Good-Enough\u27 Hypothesis and cue-based memory retrieval as central aspects. The \u27Good-Enough\u27 Hypothesis states that all speakers have access to two processing routes: a complete syntactic route, and a \u27good enough\u27 heuristic route (Ferreira, Bailey, & Ferraro, 2002; Ferreira, 2003). In the interest of conserving resources, speakers tend to rely more on heuristics and templates whenever the task allows, and may be required to rely on this fallback route when task demand is high. In the proposed GC model, cue-based memory retrieval (CBMR) is the instantiation of the complete syntactic route for agreement and long-distance dependencies in particular (Lewis & Vasishth, 2005; Wagers, Lau, & Phillips, 2009; Wagers, 2008). When retrieval fails using CBMR (due to cue overlap, memory trace decay, or some other factor), comprehenders may compensate by applying a \u27good-enough\u27 processing heuristic, which prioritizes general comprehension over detailed syntactic computation. Prosody (or implicit prosody) may reduce processing load by either facilitating syntactic processing or otherwise assisting memory retrieval, thus reducing reliance on the good-enough fallback route. This investigation explores how text presentation format interacts with these algorithmic versus heuristic processing strategies. Most specifically, measuring whether the presentation format of text affects readers\u27 comprehension and ability to detect subject-verb agreement errors in simple and complex relative clause constructions. The experimental design manipulated text presentation to influence implicit prosody, using sentences designed to induce subject-verb agreement attraction errors. Materials included simple and embedded relative clauses with head nouns and verbs that were either matched or mismatched for number. Participants read items in one of three presentation formats: a) whole sentence, b) word-by-word, or b) phrase-by-phrase, and rated each item for grammaticality and responded to a comprehension probe. Results indicate that while overall comprehension is typically prioritized over grammatical processing (following the \u27Good-Enough\u27 Hypothesis), the effects of presentation format are differentially influential based on group differences and processing measure. For the L1 participants, facilitating the projection of phrasal prosody (phrase-by-phrase presentation) onto text enhances performance in syntactic and grammatical processing, while disrupting it via a word-by-word presentation decreases comprehension accuracy. For the L2 participants however, phrase-by-phrase presentation is not significantly beneficial for grammatical processing\u27even resulting in a decrease in comprehension accuracy. These differences provide insight into the interaction of cognitive taskload, processing strategy selection, and the role of implicit prosody in reading fluency, building toward a comprehensive processing model for speakers of varying language profiles and proficiencies

Prozódiai változatosság rejtett Markov-modell alapú szövegfelolvasóval

A prozódiai változatossággal kiegészített szövegfelolvasó rendszer olyan alkalmazásokban lehet hasznos, ahol hasonló jelleg, ismétld mondatok szintetizálására van szükség. A cikkben bemutatunk egy új módszert, amellyel egy adott szöveghez különböz prozódiával rendelkez mondatváltozatokat lehet szintetizálni. A prozódia komponensei közül a dallammal és hangsúllyal foglalkozunk az alapfrekvencia (F0) változtatásán keresztül. Ehhez egy statisztikai F0-modellt használunk fel rejtett Markov-modell alapú beszédszintetizátorban. A betanításhoz használt eredeti beszédkorpuszt a SOFM (Self Organizing Feature Map) módszerrel felbontjuk több részkorpuszra. A különböz beszédkorpuszokból betanult modellekkel eltér dallamú mondatváltozatokat szintetizálunk azonos szöveghez. A mondatváltozatok közötti különbségeket megvizsgálva a szubjektív kísérletek azt mutatják, hogy az alapfrekvencia eltérése sok esetben elég jelents ahhoz, hogy ez az emberi fül számára is észlelhet legyen