ProsodyPro — A Tool for Large-scale Systematic Prosody Analysis

This paper introduces ProsodyPro — A software tool for facilitating large-scale analysis of speech prosody, especially for experimental data. The program allows users to perform systematic analysis of large amounts of data and generates a rich set of output, including both continuous data like timenormalized F0 contours and F0 velocity profiles suitable for graphical analysis, and discrete measurements suitable for statistical analysis. It maximizes efficiency by automating tasks that do not require human judgment, and saving analysis output in formats that are ready for further graphical and statistical analysis

Percepção e produção de aprendizes brasileiros de francês: o caso das vogais médias anteriores arredondadas

Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Comunicação e Expressão, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Linguística, Florianópolis, 2011Este estudo investigou o comportamento acústico das vogais anteriores médias arredondadas do francês ... e ... na fala de seis aprendizes brasileiros de FLE, bem como a percepção que aprendizes brasileiros têm das vogais produzidas por franceses nativos. Os informantes foram selecionados entre estudantes de sexo feminino do Curso de Graduação em Letras R Francês da Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Os dados coletados com essas informantes puderam ser confrontados com os dados coletados com informantes francesas, moradoras da região parisiense. Os resultados deste trabalho demonstram que o tempo de aprendizado (ou experiência) com a língua estrangeira melhora a percepção que as estudantes brasileiras têm das vogais ... e ..., e que a melhoria da percepção é acompanhada de uma melhoria na qualidade da produção das mesmas vogais.Cette étude a pour but d.enquêter à propos du comportement acoustique des voyelles moyennes antérieures et arrondies ... et ... du français chez six apprenants brésiliens du FLE. Cette enquête porte aussi sur la perception des apprenants brésiliens par rapport aux voyelles réalisées par des français natifs. Les locuteurs ont été sélectionnés parmi les étudiants de sexe féminin du Cours de Licence en Lettres R Français de l.Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Les données recueillies auprès de ces locutrices ont pu être comparées avec celles des locutrices françaises demeurant en région parisienne. Les résultats de cette recherche nous ont montré que le temps d.apprentissage (ou l.expérience) en langue étrangère améliore la perception des voyelles ... et ..., et que l.amélioration de la perception est suivie d.une amélioration de la qualité de la production de ces voyelles

Les facteurs prosodiques qui marquent la perception des fins de tour de parole

"Mémoire présenté à la Faculté des études supérieures de l'Université Laval comme exigence partielle du programme de maîtrise en linguistique offerte à l'Université du Québec à Chicoutimi en vertu d'un protocole d'entente avec l'Université Laval pour l'obtention du grade de maître ès arts (M.A)".La présente étude s'intéresse principalement aux éléments prosodiques, c'est-à-dire l'intonation, la pause et l'intensité, utilisés dans une conversation afin de comprendre comment les locuteurs les utilisent pour signaler la fin de leurs tours de parole. Pour ce faire, nous avons utilisé un corpus composé de 20 tours de parole longs tirés d'une conversation spontanée entre deux étudiants québécois de niveau universitaire. Pour réaliser cette expérimentation, nous avons procédé en deux grandes étapes. Tout d'abord, une analyse auditive a été faite afin d'identifier les facteurs présents à la fin et à l'intérieur des tours de parole. Par la suite, les facteurs prosodiques ont été soumis à une analyse instrumentale plus poussée. Afin d'avoir un portrait un peu plus fidèle à la réalité, des éléments syntaxiques et sémanticopragmatiques ont aussi été étudiés. Les résultats obtenus montrent que l'utilisation des différents indices étudiés est assez partagée. Il semblerait en effet que les locuteurs de notre étude aient tendance à utiliser un ensemble d'éléments pour signaler la fin de leurs tours de parole plutôt que d'utiliser un élément de façon prédominante. Contrairement à l'idée généralement répandue, la production d'une pause longue accompagnée d'une descente de fréquence et d'intensité ne serait pas un indice suffisant en oral spontané. Les facteurs prosodiques auraient besoin d'être complétés par des indices syntaxiques et sémantico-pragmatiques pour être efficace

The prosodic design of Modern Standard Arabic political monologues

The aim of this study is to describe and understand the prosodic design of Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) political monologues. To work towards this aim, we compare two political monologues produced by the same speaker with a broadcast news reading produced by a news announcer. Through comparison of political monologues and broadcast news reading, we highlight linguistic strategies which could be used in any genre of speech, and also what we argue to be persuasive strategies which contribute to the political work of persuasion. We rely on a combination of prosodic, syntactic, and discourse (semantic) evidence to account for linguistic strategies, and on a similar combination of prosodic, syntactic, and discourse (semantics and pragmatics) evidence to account for persuasive strategies, but our primary contribution is highlighting the use of prosody as a persuasive political strategy. A further contribution of this work to the field of knowledge is the elaboration of a set of fine-grained prosodic, syntactic, and discourse structures proposed for broadcast MSA monologues. The prosodic, syntactic, and discourse structures are first labelled independently according to a set of criteria (set out in Chapter 4 Methods). Then, we triangulate the results of labelling the prosodic, syntactic, and discourse structures independently, in Chapters 5-6 leading up to Chapter 7 where the major contribution of this work is highlighted, that is, the use of prosody as a persuasive strategy. The main argument in this work is structured in this gradual way because of the way the process of segmentation is carried out on all three data samples. The process of segmentation starts with identification of abstract forms, and then associates functions to these abstract forms based on detailed explanations of specific linguistic phenomena drawn from the process of triangulation. Therefore, the methodology implemented for broadcast MSA, which can also serve as a methodology for analysing MSA political monologues, is an integral and essential part of the main argument in this thesis

Le paragraphe oral en français L1, en suédois L1 et en français L2 : étude syntaxique, prosodique et discursive

This study examines the structure and the use of the speech paragraph (le paragraphe oral), as defined by Morel and Danon-Boileau 1998, in L1 French, in L1 Swedish and in the L2 French production of two advanced Swedish learners. The corpus examined consists of seven informal spontaneous endolingual and exolingual conversations. The study is not only contrastive, but also longitudinal, in the sense that each of the two learners has been recorded before and after a one-term long stay at a French university. After a short introductory chapter, chapter 2 discusses various methods used in analysing spoken discourse and prosody in French and Swedish. Chapter 3 presents the speech paragraph theory of Morel and Danon-Boileau. The analysed corpus is described in chapter 4. The analyses of the corpus are presented in chapters 5 to 9. Chapter 5 contains an analysis of the préambule, the first speech paragraph segment. Chapter 6 deals with the second speech paragraph segment, the rhème, and chapter 7 with the third segment, the posthème. Chapter 8 examines the ponctuants in the three productions. Chapter 9 includes a brief description of the speech paragraphs in the three productions examined. It also contains analyses of the incises and of the régulateurs (backchannels) in the corpus. At the end of the chapter different types of speech paragraphs are shown and the defining criteria of the speech paragraph are discussed. The main differences between the L1 and the L2 French productions are found in the structure and the use of the préambules and in the use of modal elements in all positions within the speech paragraph. It is observed that the préambules in L2 French are less developed than those in L1 French. This difference is particularly visible in the use of initial préambules having a primarily textual function. The structure of the L2 French préambules is partially explained by an influence of the L1 Swedish préambule structure. As for the use of modal elements, the analyses show that both the learners use a significantly smaller number of different words and expressions than the native speakers to express each type of modal element (le point de vue and the modus dissocié in the préambule, the modal elements in the rhème, the modal postrhèmes and the ponctuants). Another difference between the L1 and the L2 French productions is that the learners produce a much smaller number of "mono-constructed" speech paragraphs than the native speakers. This indicates that the learners contribute less to the development of the conversation than the native speakers. Comparatively few changes can be seen in the learners? speech paragraph production after their stay in France