The acquisition of melodic form and meaning in yes-no interrogatives by Catalan and Spanish speaking children

This study investigates the link between interrogative intonation and meaning in child-directed speech (henceforth CDS) and how this is reflected in the early development of yes-no-interrogatives of Catalan- and Spanish-speaking children. Previous research found that children before the two-word period produce several types of interrogatives and that their productions generally reflect the adult inventory pattern (Lleó & Rakow 2011; Prieto et al. 2012). Yet prior studies have not included an analysis of the pragmatic meanings that are encoded intonationally. This investigation takes an integrated approach to the study of intonational development within the domain of yes-no questions, exploring further the correspondence between intonational form and meaning in early interrogative production and relating it to the pragmatics of interrogative intonation in child-directed speech. A set of 723 interrogative utterances produced by 3 Catalan- and 2 Spanish-acquiring children between the onset of interrogative production and 2;4 were pragmatically and then prosodically analyzed, as well as a set of 867 utterances from Catalan and Spanish CDS. The data were extracted from the Serra-Solé Catalan Corpus and the Ojea and López-Ornat Spanish Corpora in CHILDES. Production results show that all children perform some instance of questioning before the two-word period and that their productions generally reflect the adult inventory patterns. Moreover, the results show a preference relationship between the different types of nuclear pitch configurations and the pragmatic meanings that underlie the yes-no-interrogative forms. Finally, these results highlight the importance of the assessment of form-meaning relationships for the understanding of intonational development

Intonational cues to student questions in tutoring dialogs

Successful Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) must be able to recognize when their students are asking a question. They must identify question form as well as function in order to respond appropriately. Our study examines whether intonational features, specifically, F0 height and rise range, are useful cues to student question type in a corpus of 643 American English questions. Results show a quantitative effect of both form and function. In addition, among clarification-seeking questions, we observed differences based on the type of clarification being sought. 1 Index Terms: intonation, questions, tutoring, dialog acts

A prosódia de sentenças interrogativas totais nos falares catarinenses e sergipanos

Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Comunicação e Expressão, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Linguística, Florianópolis, 2015.O presente trabalho tem como objetivo principal investigar o comportamento melódico de sentenças interrogativas totais (sim/não) produzidas por catarinenses e sergipanos. Visa também, a partir da percepção de florianopolitanos e aracajuanos sobre suas próprias produções, verificar se as inferências entonacionais aqui apresentadas correspondem às percepções dos ouvintes. Apresentamos resultados de análises realizadas a partir de sentenças produzidas por informantes de Blumenau, Chapecó, Florianópolis e Lages, do estado de Santa Catarina e, das cidades de Aracaju, Estância e Lagarto, do estado de Sergipe. Da etapa de produção, participaram, ao todo, 14 locutores e, da etapa de percepção, 70 juízes. Trata-se de um estudo vinculado ao projeto Amper-POR (Atlas Multimídia Prosódico do Espaço Românico  Língua Portuguesa), que busca descrever a prosódia das línguas românicas. Agregou-se também ao presente estudo um corpus de fala lida, elaborado especificamente para esta pesquisa. O texto trata de um diálogo com contexto semântico-pragmático que estimula, de maneira mais natural possível, a produção de interrogativas totais neutras, mas também de interrogativas atitudinais de dúvida e de confirmação. Visando a comparação, todas as variedades das interrogativas totais aqui analisadas possuem as mesmas distribuições acentuais na região pré-nuclear ou nuclear das sentenças. Além disso, valores de F0 fornecidos em Hertz pelos scripts Amper foram normalizados em semitons e as análises que exigiam a duração, como a taxa de elocução, por exemplo, foram calculadas através da relação V2V (do início de uma vogal até o começo da vogal seguinte). Com respeito à frequência fundamental, descrevemos o desenho da curva de F0 e analisamos, a partir de valores normalizados, seis níveis de análise: (i) a média de F0, (ii) a variação de altura F0 intravocálica e (iii) intervocálica,(iv) a variação de altura de F0 no movimento de subida das interrogativas, (v) a tessitura (variação de F0 entre o ponto mínimo e o ponto máximo do enunciado) e a (vi) inclinação de F0 nas tônicas em região nuclear. Com respeito à duração, extraímos a taxa de elocução de cada uma das variedades. Dentre os resultados encontrados, verificamos que o contorno da região nuclear das interrogativas produzidas por catarinenses é quase que sistematicamente ascendente-descendente. As sentenças terminadas por paroxítonas produzidas por florianopolitanos e blumenauenses apresentam alto grau de desvozeamento das átonas finais, o que impede muitas vezes que o movimento descendente se complete. No que concerne às interrogativas neutras, os dados dos blumenauenses e dos florianopolitanos apresentam maiores semelhanças entre si, com menor alçamento de F0 no movimento de subida final. Os dados dos lageanos e dos chapecoenses têm mais proximidade entre si, com maior variação de altura F0 no movimento ascendente da curva. Os sergipanos também apresentaram, para a região nuclear, curvas ascendente-descendentes, porém, exibiram com maior frequência curvas com movimentos apenas ascendentes. A média de F0, a variação de altura F0 no movimento de subida e a tessitura se mostraram importantes parâmetros de distinção entre as variedades dialetais aqui estudadas. As proeminências ao longo da curva de F0 das interrogativas para os catarinenses se mostraram mais atreladas à distribuição dos acentos lexicais das palavras. Já as curvas melódicas dos sergipanos apresentaram, no primeiro terço da curva, ataque alto. Na sequência, movimento descendente e estacionário que configura, para o segundo terço da curva, um vale. O movimento ascendente da interrogativa é íngreme e só se realizará mais próximo à última sílaba do enunciado. Testes estatísticos validaram as diferenças entre as curvas melódicas dos catarinenses e dos sergipanos como significativas. No que concerne às sentenças não neutras, encontramos tanto para dúvida quanto para a confirmação nas produções de florianopolitanos e aracajuanos, subida tardia e frequências menos elevadas em relação às neutras. As taxas de elocução nos permitiram inferir que se confirma a impressão de que o florianopolitano fala mais rápido do que outras variedades catarinenses e não ratifica à visão impressionista de que todos os nordestinos têm um falar lento. Os testes de percepção revelaram que os juízes de Florianópolis foram capazes de identificar o falar florianopolitano, mas não tiveram bom desempenho diante das demais variedades dialetais catarinenses às quais foram expostos. Já os juízes de Aracaju não foram capazes de identificar satisfatoriamente nem o falar aracajuano, nem as demais variedades dialetais sergipanas às quais foram expostos.Abstract : The present study investigated the melodic behavior of yes-no interrogatives (total) produced by subjects from Santa Catarina and Sergipe. By investigating the subjects perception of their own production, this study also examined whether the intonational inferences hereby presented correlated to listeners perception. We present results obtained with sentences produced by speakers from Blumenau, Chapecó, Florianópolis, and Lages, in Santa Catarina, and speakers from Aracaju, Estância, and Lagarto, in Sergipe. Fourteen speakers participated in the production experiment, whereas 70 judges took part in the perception tests. This research is linked to the Amper-POR project (Atlas Multimídia Prosódico do Espaço Românico  Língua Portuguesa), which seeks to describe the prosody of romance languages. A corpus based on reading elicitation was developed specially for the present study. The text used is a dialogue presented within a semantic-pragmatic context that encourages the production, in the most natural way, not only of neutral yes-no questions, but also the production of attitudinal questions that express either doubt or confirmation. All the types of total interrogatives included in the analyses presented the same stress distribution on prenuclear or nuclear regions so that a comparison could be carried out. Moreover, F0 values which were provided in Hertz by Amper scripts were normalized in semitones, and analyzes that required duration, as speech rate, for instance, were calculated by the V2V relation (the beginning of a vowel up to the beginning of the following vowel). With respect to the fundamental frequency, we described the melodic contour and analyzed, by using normalized values, the F0 mean, the variation of the F0 within a vowel range, the variation of the F0 in its rising movement, the pitch range (i.e., the variation of the F0 between the minimum and maximum points of the utterance) and the vowel slope (inclination of the stress vowels). Regarding duration, we extracted the elocution rate of each of the varieties. Concerning the results, we were able to observe that the contour of the nuclear region in interrogatives produced by subjects from Santa Catarina is almost systematically rising-falling. Sentences ending with paroxytones produced by subjects from Florianópolis and Blumenau presented a high rate of devoicing in final unstressed syllables, which most of timesprevented the falling movement from completion. Concerning neutral interrogatives, data provided by subjects from Blumenau and Florianópolis presented more similarities among them, with a shorter F0 increment in the final rise movement. Data obtained with subjects from Lages and Chapeço shared more similarities, with larger variation in the F0 height in the rising movement of the curve. Subjects from Sergipe also presented rising-falling curves for the nuclear region, but they more frequently showed curves with movements that were only rising. The F0 mean, the variation of F0 mean in the rising movement, and pitch range proved to be important distinction parameters among the dialectal varieties here investigated. The prominences throughout the melodic curve of interrogatives for subjects from Santa Catarina were more entrenched to the distribution of lexical stress. The melodic curves of subjects from Sergipe showeda high onset throughout the first third of the curve.In sequence, they showed a falling and stationary movement that configures, for the second third of the curve, a valley. The rising t movement of the interrogative is inclined and will be realized only next to the last syllable in the utterance. Statistical tests demonstrated that the differences between the melodic curves of subjects from Santa Catarina and from Sergipe were significant. Concerning the non-neutral sentences, we found a late rise and lower frequencies as much for doubt as for confirmation in relation to neutral sentences in productions from both Florianópolis and Sergipe. The speech rates allowed us to infer that speech from Florianopolis subjects is faster than other varieties from Santa Catarina, and thatsubjects from northeastern Brazilhave a low speech rate, which coincides well with general knowledge held about speech rates from these places. Perception tests revealed that judges from Florianópolis were able to identify their own speech variety, but they did not do well with the other state dialectal varieties that they were exposed to. On the other hand, judges from Aracaju were not able to identify satisfactorily either speech from Aracaju or speech from other dialectal varieties from Sergipe that they were exposed to