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

RRL: A Rich Representation Language for the Description of Agent Behaviour in NECA

In this paper, we describe the Rich Representation Language (RRL) which is used in the NECA system. The NECA system generates interactions between two or more animated characters. The RRL is a formal framework for representing the information that is exchanged at the interfaces between the various NECA system modules

Consistency in transcription and labelling of German intonation with GToBI

A diverse set of speech data was labelled in three sites by 13 transcribers with differing levels of expertise, using GToBI, a consensus transcription system for German intonation. Overall inter-transcriber -consistency suggests that, with training, labellers can acquire sufficient skill with GToBI for large-scale database labelling. 1

Cues to gemination in word-initial position in Maltese

In this study we investigated word-initial geminates in Maltese, focusing on sub-segmental acoustic durations: constriction duration and, where appropriate, VOT; and the duration of adjacent segments: the tonic vowel duration and the duration of the inter-consonantal interval spanning the word boundary. This latter interval, between the consonant in the previous word and the singleton/geminate consonant, is measured so as to capture the presence and duration of a vocalic element, which has been referred to as epenthetic, and reportedly precedes word-initial geminates in the language. Whilst constriction duration plays an important role in distinguishing geminates from singletons (a ratio of 1.7:1), VOT does not. Moreover, although the duration of the following tonic vowel plays no role, the duration of the preceding context – the inter-consonantal interval – is a strong cue to gemination word-initially.peer-reviewe

Editorial: Variability in language predictions: assessing the influence of speaker, text and experimental method

Editorial on the research topic "Variability in language predictions: assessing the influence of speaker, text and experimental method"

Assessing incomplete neutralization of final devoicing in German

It has been claimed that the long established neutralization of the voicing distinction in domain final position in German is phonetically incomplete. However, many studies that have advanced this claim have subsequently been criticized on methodological grounds, calling incomplete neutralization into question. In three production experiments and one perception experiment we address these methodological criticisms. In the first production study, we address the role of orthography. In a large scale auditory task using pseudowords, we confirm that neutralization is indeed incomplete and suggest that previous null results may simply be due to lack of statistical power. In two follow-up production studies (Experiments 2 and 3), we rule out a potential confound of Experiment 1, namely that the effect might be due to accommodation to the presented auditory stimuli, by manipulating the duration of the preceding vowel. While the between-items design (Experiment 2) replicated the findings of Experiment 1, the between-subjects version (Experiment 3) failed to find a statistically significant incomplete neutralization effect, although we found numerical tendencies in the expected direction. Finally, in a perception study (Experiment 4), we demonstrate that the subphonemic differences between final voiceless and devoiced stops are audible, but only barely so. Even though the present findings provide evidence for the robustness of incomplete neutralization in German, the small effect sizes highlight the challenges of investigating this phenomenon. We argue that without necessarily postulating functional relevance, incomplete neutralization can be accounted for by recent models of lexical organization. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Periodic energy mass on head and edge tones in Maltese wh-constructions

This paper is concerned with the relation between tonal association and prosodic strength in different tone bearing positions in Maltese wh-words. In these words, tones are associated with the stressed syllable (head association) in indirect and quoted questions, but with the initial syllable (edge association) in direct questions. In a language that has pitch accents to cue prominence (a head prominence language according to Jun's typology), the initial syllable, if not stressed, would not typically cue prominence, but rather juncture. Using periodic energy mass as a measure of strength, and thus prominence, we found that mass enhancement is not conditioned by tonal association (either head or edge) but rather by the lexical stress. Whereas the present study shows that the word-initial H tone does not affect the relative prominence between the stressed syllable and the word-initial one, and thus does not cue prominence on the initial syllable, there is a potentially different prominence-cueing function of this early H peak. That is, for example a prominence cueing function at the word level (i.e., one which makes the entire word more prominent) driven by modality or pragmatic force.peer-reviewe

Word-level prominence and “stress deafness” in Maltese English bilinguals

This study investigates “stress deafness” in bilingual speakers of Maltese and Maltese English. Although both reportedly have lexical stress, the acoustic cues to prominence appear to be relatively weak. Further, word-initial pitch peaks make pitch an unreliable cue to lexical stress, which can be elsewhere in the word. In a sequence recall task, we show that speakers dominant in Maltese exhibit a classic “stress deafness” effect, similar to speakers of French. Speakers who identify as balanced or Maltese English dominant have more diverse results and do not show such a strong tendency towards “stress deafness”. These speakers may rely on their exposure to other varieties of English to identify (and recall) word prominences. This study suggests that the nature of stress in Maltese might need to be revisited.peer-reviewe

DIMA - Annotation Guidelines for German Intonation

Kügler F, Smolibocki B, Arnold D, et al. DIMA - Annotation Guidelines for German Intonation. In: Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Glasgow, Scotland; 2015: 317.This paper presents newly developed guidelines for prosodic annotation of German as a consensus system agreed upon by German intonologists. The DIMA system is rooted in the framework of autosegmental-metrical phonology. One important goal of the consensus is to make exchanging data between groups easier since German intonation is currently annotated according to different models. To this end, we aim to provide guidelines that are easy to learn. The guidelines were evaluated running an inter-annotator reliability study on three different speech styles (read speech, monologue and dialogue). The overall high κ between 0.76 and 0.89 (depending on the speech style) shows that the DIMA conventions can be applied successfully