Prosodic description: An introduction for fieldworkers

This article provides an introductory tutorial on prosodic features such as tone and accent for researchers working on little-known languages. It specifically addresses the needs of non-specialists and thus does not presuppose knowledge of the phonetics and phonology of prosodic features. Instead, it intends to introduce the uninitiated reader to a field often shied away from because of its (in part real, but in part also just imagined) complexities. It consists of a concise overview of the basic phonetic phenomena (section 2) and the major categories and problems of their functional and phonological analysis (sections 3 and 4). Section 5 gives practical advice for documenting and analyzing prosodic features in the field.National Foreign Language Resource Cente

Syllable, accent, rhythm: typological and methodological considerations for teaching Spanish as a foreign language

El ritmo es una propiedad del habla relacionada con la organizacióntemporal de los sonidos en términos de agrupamiento. Las unidades desegmentación son específicas de cada lengua y emergen de propiedades fonológicastales como la estructura silábica, la fonotáctica, y los contrastes prosódicos en losniveles léxico y postléxico.Las diferencias rítmicas entre las lenguas plantean problemas para laadquisición de segundas lenguas, debido a la compleja combinación de clavesacústicas, las dificultades perceptivas causadas por la sordera fonológica, y lasinterferencias con la organización de los contrastes segmentales y con el accesoal léxico.Este artículo ofrece una comparación tipológica que incluye descripcionesde las distintas clases de ritmo existentes (temporización silábica, acentual, ymoraica), así como de los distintos sistemas de contraste prosódico en el nivelléxico (lenguas tonales, de acento tonal, y de acento tipo «stress»). Este análisispermite predecir los errores típicos que afectan a los estudiantes de español dedistintas procedencias lingüísticas.Además, se describe la estructura silábica y el sistema acentual del español, yse sugieren algunas estrategias para practicarlos en clase

Automatic sentence stress feedback for non-native English learners

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Automatic Pronunciation Assessment -- A Review

Pronunciation assessment and its application in computer-aided pronunciation training (CAPT) have seen impressive progress in recent years. With the rapid growth in language processing and deep learning over the past few years, there is a need for an updated review. In this paper, we review methods employed in pronunciation assessment for both phonemic and prosodic. We categorize the main challenges observed in prominent research trends, and highlight existing limitations, and available resources. This is followed by a discussion of the remaining challenges and possible directions for future work.Comment: 9 pages, accepted to EMNLP Finding

The intonation of interrogation in Palermo Italian: implications for intonation theory

In Palernno Italian yes-no interrogatives, if the last syllable of a phrase is unstressed, the nuclear pitch contour is rising-falling, whereas if it is stressed, the contour is simply rising. Such context-dependent variation cannot be adequately accounted for within a British-style approach to intonation. By contrast, autosegmental pitch accent studies of intonation, where nuclear pitch configurations are expressed in terms of H(igh) and L(ow) tones, are shown to offer the flexibility necessary to do so. These tones are incorporated into a hierarchical structure in which they have either an accentual or a primarily delimitative function. In the former case, tones are part of a Pitch Accent which has an association to a syllable; in the latter case, tones are associated to nodes dominating higher prosodic constituents, either the intermediate phrase or the intonation phrase, and are realised as boundary tones. Building on current analyses, a model is proposed in which tones in the Pitch Accent are also hierarchically structured, involving two levels: the Supertone and Tone. This enriched Pitch Accent structure not only explains apparent inconsistencies in phonetic alignment in Palermo Italian, but also accounts for equivalent consistency in alignment in English. In addition it allows leading tones in Palermo Italian to be treated in a qualitatively different way from leading tones in English. The Palermo Italian interrogative marker consists of a L*+H Pitch Accent. There is no paradigmatic contrast on the intermediate phrase boundary tone (it is always L) which means that its function is purely delimitative. This tone is only fully realised when a postaccentual syllable is available to carry it; technically, it requires a secondary attachment to a syllable. The absence of the falling part of the L*+H L (L) configuration in phrases with no postaccentual syllable is thus explained

Language identification with suprasegmental cues: A study based on speech resynthesis

This paper proposes a new experimental paradigm to explore the discriminability of languages, a question which is crucial to the child born in a bilingual environment. This paradigm employs the speech resynthesis technique, enabling the experimenter to preserve or degrade acoustic cues such as phonotactics, syllabic rhythm or intonation from natural utterances. English and Japanese sentences were resynthesized, preserving broad phonotactics, rhythm and intonation (Condition 1), rhythm and intonation (Condition 2), intonation only (Condition 3), or rhythm only (Condition 4). The findings support the notion that syllabic rhythm is a necessary and sufficient cue for French adult subjects to discriminate English from Japanese sentences. The results are consistent with previous research using low-pass filtered speech, as well as with phonological theories predicting rhythmic differences between languages. Thus, the new methodology proposed appears to be well-suited to study language discrimination. Applications for other domains of psycholinguistic research and for automatic language identification are considered