Intonational Analysis of Polar Questions: A Comparative Investigation Between Standard Modern Greek and Standard British English

Τα υπερτεμαχιακά φαινόμενα έχουν εκτενώς μελετηθεί ως προς τη δημιουργία νοήματος, τόσο σε λεξιλογικό όσο και σε προτασιακό επίπεδο (Nespor and Vogel 2007; Ladd 2008; Nolan 2022). Στη διαδικασία προσέγγισης του νοήματος μιας πρότασης, ο επιτονισμός θεωρείται το ακριβέστερο εργαλείο φωνολογικής ανάλυσης, καθότι παρέχει όλες τις αναγκαίες γραμματικές και πραγματολογικές πληροφορίες μιας πρότασης (Baltazani 2003; Levis 2012; Nagy 2015). Συγκρίνοντας δύο επιτονικά διαφορετικές μεταξύ τους γλώσσες, την Κοινή Νέα Ελληνική και την Κοινή Αγγλική, η παρούσα έρευνα έχει ως στόχο να παρουσιάσει την επιτονική διάσταση των ευθείων πολικών ερωτήσεων στις δύο γλώσσες. Με αυτό εννοούνται όλες οι επιτονικές επιλογές (δηλαδή το είδος και η θέση τόνου μέσα στην ερώτηση, καθώς και το είδος της παύσης εντός της ερώτησης) κατά την παραγωγή πολικών ερωτήσεων, ενώ βάση της παρούσας έρευνας αποτελούν η τοποθέτηση του πυρηνικού τόνου καθώς και το είδος των φραστικών και οριακών τόνων. Μέσω της παρουσίασης των επιτονικών μοτίβων που προτιμώνται κατά την εκφορά αυτού του είδους ερωτήσεων τόσο στην Κοινή Νέα Ελληνική όσο και στην Κοινή Αγγλική, σταχυολογούνται οι κύριες ομοιότητες και διαφορές μεταξύ των δύο γλωσσών. Επιπροσθέτως, η ακροαματική και ακουστική ανάλυση τριάντα (30) αυθεντικών δεδομένων, όπως αυτά επιλέχθηκαν από διαδικτυακές πηγές και από απευθείας ηχητικές καταγραφές, παρέχουν καίριες αποδείξεις για την ακριβή περιγραφή των επιτονικών επιλογών των πολικών ερωτήσεων στην Κοινή Νέα Ελληνική και στην Κοινή Αγγλική. Η επιλογή των δεδομένων, όμοια και για τις δύο γλώσσες, έγινε με βάση το ύφος του λόγου (καταγραφή και ανάλυση 6 πολικών ερωτήσεων προσχεδιασμένου λόγου και 6 πολικών ερωτήσεων αυθόρμητου λόγου ανά γλώσσα), με σκοπό να εντοπιστεί πιθανή διαφοροποίηση του επιτονικού μοτίβου ερωτήσεων σε συνάρτηση με το ύφος εκφοράς. Η συγκεκριμένη ανάλυση επικεντρώνεται σε εκείνα τα προσωδιακά στοιχεία τα οποία αποτέλεσαν κέντρο έρευνας της επιτονικής θεωρίας, όπως αυτή εκφράστηκε από τον Cruttenden (1997) και τον Wells (2006), ενώ είναι σε πλήρη συνάρτηση με το επιτονικό μοντέλο που εντοπίζεται στην Αυτοτεμαχιακή-Μετρική Ανάλυση όπως αυτή συναντάται στους Arvaniti & Baltazani (2000) και Arvaniti, Ladd & Mennen (2006). Η πειραματική επεξεργασία και ανάλυση των δεδομένων γίνεται με τη χρήση του εργαλείου επιτονικής επισημείωσης Praat (Boersma & Weenick 2001), το οποίο χαίρει ευρείας αποδοχής σε αντίστοιχες έρευνες. Τέλος, έμφαση δίνεται επίσης στην πραγματολογική ερμηνεία των προσωδιακών χαρακτηριστικών των αυθεντικών δεδομένων μελέτης των δύο γλωσσών, με στόχο τις παιδαγωγικές προεκτάσεις αυτής της έρευνας. Με αυτόν τον τρόπο, εντοπίζονται περιπτώσεις προσωδιακών παρεμβολών από την Κοινή Νέα Ελληνική στην Κοινή Αγγλική, και αναζητείται η έκταση αυτών των παρεμβολών κατά την παραγωγή προφορικού λόγου στα Αγγλικά από φυσικούς ομιλητές της Κοινής Νέας Ελληνικής (6 πολικές ερωτήσεις προσχεδιασμένου λόγου στα Αγγλικά). Τα αποτελέσματα συντείνουν στην πιο σύγχρονη προσέγγιση του επιτονισμού ως πτυχής της έκφρασης προφορικού λόγου που είναι άρρηκτα δεμένη με την πραγματολογική ερμηνεία, απεγδυόμενη από μια a priori ύπαρξη νορμών (Papazachariou 2004; Kotsifas 2009; Arvaniti 2022).There has been a considerable amount of research regarding the importance of suprasegmental phenomena in meaning-making, either on the word or sentence level (Nespor and Vogel 2007; Ladd 2008; Nolan 2022). For the approximation of sentence meaning, intonation is considered the most significant part of phonological analysis, providing all the necessary grammatical and pragmatic information (Baltazani 2003; Levis 2012; Nagy 2015). Drawing on a comparison between two intonationally dissimilar languages, Standard Modern Greek and Standard British English, this study attempts to make a contrastive investigation of the tonal realization of polar questions in the two languages. All intonational choices (tone choice, placement of tone, and type of pausing) are considered tonal, while the basis of the research is the nuclear tone placement and the tonal movement before and at the end of the phrase (phrasal and boundary ending tones, respectively). Firstly, an extensive presentation of the intonational patterns followed in the production of yes/no questions in Standard Modern Greek, and Standard British English sheds light on the major similarities and differences between the two intonational languages. In addition, the auditory and acoustic analysis of thirty (30) authentic data extracted from online and offline sources provides up-to-date evidence for an accurate description of the intonational patterns of yes/no questions in Standard Modern Greek and Standard British English. The process of data selection, similar for both languages, was based on the style of speech (6 polar questions of instructed speech and 6 polar questions of spontaneous speech per language) to pinpoint any probable alternation of questions’ intonational patterns based on style. This form of analysis is focused on the prosodic aspects in accordance with the intonational theory formed by Cruttenden (1997) and Wells (2006), along with the Autosegmental-Metrical Model of Analysis found in Arvaniti & Baltazani (2000) and Arvaniti, Ladd & Mennen (2006). The experimental data processing and analysis were conducted via the Praat tool of intonational annotation (Boersma & Weenick 2001), which is highly esteemed in the corresponding studies. Emphasis is given on the pragmatic analysis of the prosodic features of the two languages found in this research to retrieve further pedagogical implications. Finally, 6 Native Speakers of Standard Modern Greek were recorded producing one English polar question of instructed speech. This way, it is shown whether and to what extent intonational interference plays a catalytic role when native speakers of Standard Modern Greek communicate orally in English. The findings of the study attest to the informed approach of intonation as a means of oral expression that is highly associated with pragmatic interpretation, disregarding an a priori set of norms (Papazachariou 2004; Kotsifas 2009; Arvaniti 2022)

Experiments on Detection of Voiced Hesitations in Russian Spontaneous Speech

The development and popularity of voice-user interfaces made spontaneous speech processing an important research field. One of the main focus areas in this field is automatic speech recognition (ASR) that enables the recognition and translation of spoken language into text by computers. However, ASR systems often work less efficiently for spontaneous than for read speech, since the former differs from any other type of speech in many ways. And the presence of speech disfluencies is its prominent characteristic. These phenomena are an important feature in human-human communication and at the same time they are a challenging obstacle for the speech processing tasks. In this paper we address an issue of voiced hesitations (filled pauses and sound lengthenings) detection in Russian spontaneous speech by utilizing different machine learning techniques, from grid search and gradient descent in rule-based approaches to such data-driven ones as ELM and SVM based on the automatically extracted acoustic features. Experimental results on the mixed and quality diverse corpus of spontaneous Russian speech indicate the efficiency of the techniques for the task in question, with SVM outperforming other methods

A forensic phonetic study of the vocal responses of individuals in distress

The production and perception of emotional speech is of growing importance to forensic speech scientists. They are often asked by instructing parties to provide an opinion as to whether recordings representing a violent attack are genuine, and whether speech material reflects real distress. However, they are prohibited from making statements regarding the psychological states of speakers by the International Association of Forensic Phonetics and Acoustics Code of Practice (IAFPA 2004). This study investigates two principal questions. First, it investigates how distress speech can be manifested acoustically. In so doing it proposes a taxonomy for comparing distress speech across speakers, assists in delimiting the boundaries of the vocal repertoire, and considers the extent to which acoustic measures of distress speech can distinguish between the vocalisations of real victims and actors. Second, it investigates whether listeners can discriminate between genuine and acted distress portrayals, and to what extent familiarity with forensic material increases listeners’ ability. Recordings from authentic criminal cases involving violent attack are compared with re-enactments by trained actors. Acoustic analyses examine F0, intensity, vowel formant frequencies and articulation rate. The recordings are also used as stimuli in a perceptual listening test, comparing the performance of lay listeners, police call takers and forensic practitioners. The findings lend support to the view that assessments of distress should be exercised with extreme caution. On the one hand, acoustic parameters can distinguish between non-distress and distress conditions, but cannot discriminate between acted and authentic distress, and so IAFPA’s refrain from such an assessment is justified. On the other, listeners who are familiar with authentic distress data, such as police call takers and forensic practitioners, are better able to differentiate between acted and authentic distress than lay listeners. Thus, if an assessment were to be made, the forensic practitioners may be the best group to do so

Models and Analysis of Vocal Emissions for Biomedical Applications

The International Workshop on Models and Analysis of Vocal Emissions for Biomedical Applications (MAVEBA) came into being in 1999 from the particularly felt need of sharing know-how, objectives and results between areas that until then seemed quite distinct such as bioengineering, medicine and singing. MAVEBA deals with all aspects concerning the study of the human voice with applications ranging from the newborn to the adult and elderly. Over the years the initial issues have grown and spread also in other fields of research such as occupational voice disorders, neurology, rehabilitation, image and video analysis. MAVEBA takes place every two years in Firenze, Italy. This edition celebrates twenty-two years of uninterrupted and successful research in the field of voice analysis

Plasticity in second language (L2) learning: perception of L2 phonemes by native Greek speakers of English

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.Understanding the process of language acquisition is a challenge that many researchers spanning different disciplines (e.g. linguistics, psychology, neuroscience) have grappled with for centuries. One which has in recent years attracted a lot of attention has been in the area of non-native phoneme acquisition. Speech sounds that contain multiple phonetic cues are often difficult for foreign-language learners, especially if certain cues are weighted differently in the foreign and native languages. Greek adult and child speakers of English were studied to determine which cues (duration or spectral) they were using to make discrimination and identification judgments for an English vowel contrast pair. To this end, two forms of identification and discrimination tasks were used: natural (unedited) stimuli and another ‘modified’ vowel duration stimuli which were edited so that there were no duration differences between the vowels. Results show the Greek speakers were particularly impaired when they were unable to use the duration cue as compared to the native English speakers. Similar results were also obtained in control experiments where there was no orthographic representation or where the stimuli were cross-spliced to modify the phonetic neighborhood. Further experiments used high-variability training sessions to enhance vowel perception. Following training, performance improved for both Greek adult and child groups as revealed by post training tests. However the improvements were most pronounced for the child Greek speaker group. A further study examined the effect of different orthographic cues that might affect rhyme and homophony judgment. The results of that study showed that Greek speakers were in general more affected by orthography and regularity (particularly of the vowel) in making these judgments. This would suggest that Greek speakers were more sensitive to irrelevant orthographic cues, mirroring the results in the auditory modality where they focused on irrelevant acoustic cues. The results are discussed in terms of current theories of language acquisition, with particular reference to acquisition of non-native phonemes.School of Social Sciences, Brunel Universit

Implicit indefinite objects at the syntax-semantics-pragmatics interface: a probabilistic model of acceptability judgments

Optionally transitive verbs, whose Patient participant is semantically obligatory but syntactically optional (e.g., to eat, to drink, to write), deviate from the transitive prototype defined by Hopper and Thompson (1980). Following Fillmore (1986), unexpressed objects may be either indefinite (referring to prototypical Patients of a verb, whose actual entity is unknown or irrelevant) or definite (with a referent available in the immediate intra- or extra-linguistic context). This thesis centered on indefinite null objects, which the literature argues to be a gradient, non-categorical phenomenon possible with virtually any transitive verb (in different degrees depending on the verb semantics), favored or hindered by several semantic, aspectual, pragmatic, and discourse factors. In particular, the probabilistic model of the grammaticality of indefinite null objects hereby discussed takes into account a continuous factor (semantic selectivity, as a proxy to object recoverability) and four binary factors (telicity, perfectivity, iterativity, and manner specification). This work was inspired by Medina (2007), who modeled the effect of three predictors (semantic selectivity, telicity, and perfectivity) on the grammaticality of indefinite null objects (as gauged via Likert-scale acceptability judgments elicited from native speakers of English) within the framework of Stochastic Optimality Theory. In her variant of the framework, the constraints get floating rankings based on the input verb’s semantic selectivity, which she modeled via the Selectional Preference Strength measure by Resnik (1993, 1996). I expanded Medina’s model by modeling implicit indefinite objects in two languages (English and Italian), by using three different measures of semantic selectivity (Resnik’s SPS; Behavioral PISA, inspired by Medina’s Object Similarity measure; and Computational PISA, a novel similarity-based measure by Cappelli and Lenci (2020) based on distributional semantics), and by adding iterativity and manner specification as new predictors in the model. Both the English and the Italian five-predictor models based on Behavioral PISA explain almost half of the variance in the data, improving on the Medina-like three-predictor models based on Resnik’s SPS. Moreover, they have a comparable range of predicted object-dropping probabilities (30-100% in English, 30-90% in Italian), and the predictors perform consistently with theoretical literature on object drop. Indeed, in both models, atelic imperfective iterative manner-specified inputs are the most likely to drop their object (between 80% and 90%), while telic perfective non-iterative manner-unspecified inputs are the least likely (between 30% and 40%). The constraint re-ranking probabilities are always directly proportional to semantic selectivity, with the exception of Telic End in Italian. Both models show a main effect of telicity, but the second most relevant factor in the model is perfectivity in English and manner specification in Italian

Proceedings of the VIIth GSCP International Conference

The 7th International Conference of the Gruppo di Studi sulla Comunicazione Parlata, dedicated to the memory of Claire Blanche-Benveniste, chose as its main theme Speech and Corpora. The wide international origin of the 235 authors from 21 countries and 95 institutions led to papers on many different languages. The 89 papers of this volume reflect the themes of the conference: spoken corpora compilation and annotation, with the technological connected fields; the relation between prosody and pragmatics; speech pathologies; and different papers on phonetics, speech and linguistic analysis, pragmatics and sociolinguistics. Many papers are also dedicated to speech and second language studies. The online publication with FUP allows direct access to sound and video linked to papers (when downloaded)

Urdu Vowel System and Perception of English Vowels by Punjabi-Urdu Speakers

A well-defined vocalic and consonantal system is a prerequisite when investigating the perception and production of a second language. The lack of a well-defined Urdu vowel system in the multilingual context of Pakistan motivated investigation of the acoustic and phonetic properties of Urdu vowels. Due to the significant influence of a number of first languages, the study focuses on the Urdu spoken in Punjab, Pakistan. A production experiment reports the acoustic properties of the monophthongs and six diphthongs in Urdu. The results showed that Urdu distinguishes between short and long vowels, and lacks an open-mid front and an open-mid back vowel. Since the central vowel is fairly open and retracted, it appears that the central vowel space is empty. This was reflected in the difficulty of perceiving the central vowels of Standard Southern British English (SSBE) by Punjabi Urdu speakers. The acoustic and phonetic evidence partially supports the phonetic existence of diphthongs in Urdu. The acoustic investigation of the Urdu vowel system helped to predict the perceptual assimilation and classification patterns of SSBE vowels by Punjabi-Urdu speakers. A cross-language perceptual assimilation and a free classification experiment was conducted in three different consonantal contexts to test the predictions of three mainstream models of L2 perception: SLM, PAM and L2LP. The assimilation patterns in a cross-language and category goodness rating task varied according to familiarity with the target language. The patterns of perceptual assimilation failed to predict the perceptual similarity of the SSBE vowels in the auditory free classification task. Thus, the findings support the model predictions with regard to the role of L1; however acoustic similarities between L1 and L2 neither predict the patterns of cross-language perceptual assimilation nor perceptual similarity

Plasticity in second language (L2) learning : perception of L2 phonemes by native Greek speakers of English

Understanding the process of language acquisition is a challenge that many researchers spanning different disciplines (e.g. linguistics, psychology, neuroscience) have grappled with for centuries. One which has in recent years attracted a lot of attention has been in the area of non-native phoneme acquisition. Speech sounds that contain multiple phonetic cues are often difficult for foreign-language learners, especially if certain cues are weighted differently in the foreign and native languages. Greek adult and child speakers of English were studied to determine which cues (duration or spectral) they were using to make discrimination and identification judgments for an English vowel contrast pair. To this end, two forms of identification and discrimination tasks were used: natural (unedited) stimuli and another ‘modified’ vowel duration stimuli which were edited so that there were no duration differences between the vowels. Results show the Greek speakers were particularly impaired when they were unable to use the duration cue as compared to the native English speakers. Similar results were also obtained in control experiments where there was no orthographic representation or where the stimuli were cross-spliced to modify the phonetic neighborhood. Further experiments used high-variability training sessions to enhance vowel perception. Following training, performance improved for both Greek adult and child groups as revealed by post training tests. However the improvements were most pronounced for the child Greek speaker group. A further study examined the effect of different orthographic cues that might affect rhyme and homophony judgment. The results of that study showed that Greek speakers were in general more affected by orthography and regularity (particularly of the vowel) in making these judgments. This would suggest that Greek speakers were more sensitive to irrelevant orthographic cues, mirroring the results in the auditory modality where they focused on irrelevant acoustic cues. The results are discussed in terms of current theories of language acquisition, with particular reference to acquisition of non-native phonemes.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceSchool of Social Sciences, Brunel UniversityGBUnited Kingdo