From communicative functions to prosodic forms

This is a proposal in favour of proceeding from communicative function to linguistic form, rather than the reverse, for an insightful account of how humans communicate by speech in languages. A functional framework is developed that encompasses argumentation structures, declarative and interrogative functions, and expressive intensification. Such a function orientation can become a powerful tool in comparative prosodic research across the world's languages. The potential of this approach is shown by comparing the prosodic form of Mandarin Chinese data collected in functionally contextualized scenarios with corresponding data from English and German

Communicative functions integrate segments in prosodies and prosodies in segments

This paper takes a new look at the traditionally established divide between sounds and prosodies, viewing it as a useful heuristics in language descriptions that focus on the segmental make- up of words. It pleads for a new approach that bridges this reified compartmentalization of speech in a more global communicative perspective. Data are presented from a German perception experiment in the framework of the Semantic Differential that shows interdependence of f0 contours and the spectral characteristics of a following fricative segment, for the expression of semantic functions along the scales questioning - asserting, excited - calm, forceful - not forceful, contrary - agreeable. The results lead to the conclusion that segments shape prosodies and are shaped by them in varying ways in the coding of semantic functions. This implies that the analysis of sentence prosodies needs to integrate the manifestation of segments, just as the analysis of segments needs to consider their prosodic embedding. In communicative interaction, speakers set broad prosodic time windows of varying sizes, and listeners respond to them. So, future phonetic research needs to concentrate on speech analysis in such windows

The perception of lexical stress in German: effects of segmental duration and vowel quality in different prosodic patterns

Several decades of research, focusing on English, Dutch and German, have set up a hierarchy of acoustic properties for cueing lexical stress. It attributes the strongest cue to criterial-level f0 change, followed by duration, but low weight to energy and to stressed-vowel spectra. This paper re-examines the established view with new data from German. In the natural productions of the German word pair Kaffee 'coffee' - Café 'locality' (with initial vs. final stress in a North German pronunciation), vowel duration was manipulated in a complementary fashion across the two syllables in five steps, spanning the continuum from initial to final stress on each word. The two base words provided different vowel qualities as the second variable, the intervocalic fricative was varied in two values, long and short, taken from Café and Kaffee, and the generated test words were inserted in a low f0 tail and in a high f0 hat-pattern plateau, which both eliminated f0 change as a cue to lexical stress. The sentence stimuli were judged in two listening experiments by 16 listeners in each as to whether the first or the second syllable of the test word was stressed. The results show highly significant effects of vowel duration, vowel quality and fricative duration. The combined vowel-quality and fricative variable can outweigh vowel duration as a cue to lexical stress. The effect of the prosodic frame is only marginal, especially related to a rhythmic factor. The paper concludes that there is no general hierarchy with a fixed ranking of the variables traditionally adduced to signal lexical stress. Every prosodic embedding of segmental sequences defines the hierarchy afresh

From phonetics to phonology and back again. Ladd, D.R.: phonetics in phonology; in Goldsmith, Riggle, Yu, the handbook of phonological theory; 2nd ed., pp. 348-373 (Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester 2011)

The new edition of Goldsmith [1995] has a very different content structure, for example, it no longer contains chapters on ‘Experimental Phonology’ (Ohala) or on ‘The Internal Organization of Speech Sounds’ (Clements and Hume), and it advocates a different perspective on the relationship between phonology and phonetics, summa- rized as follows in the ‘Preface’

On the role of articulatory prosodies in German message decoding

A theoretical framework for speech reduction is outlined in which 'coarticulation' and 'articulatory control' operate on sequences of 'opening-closing gestures' in linguistic and communicative settings, leading to suprasegmental properties - 'articulatory prosodies' - in the acoustic output. In linking this gestalt perspective in speech production to the role of phonetic detail in speech understanding, this paper reports on perception experiments that test listeners' reactions to varying extension of an 'articulatory prosody of palatality' in message identification. The point of departure for the experimental design was the German utterance ich kann Ihnen das ja mal sagen 'I can mention this to you' from the Kiel Corpus of Spontaneous Speech, which contains the palatalized stretch [k̟(h)ε̈n(j)n(j)əs] for the sequence of function words /kan i.n(kə)n das/ kann Ihnen das. The utterance also makes sense without the personal pronoun Ihnen. Systematic experimental variation has shown that the extent of palatality has a highly significant influence on the decoding of Ihnen and that the effect of nasal consonant duration depends on the extension of palatality. These results are discussed in a plea to base future speech perception research on a paradigm that makes the traditional segment-prosody divide more permeable, and moves away from the generally practised phoneme orientation

The Future of Phonetics 1

Abstract This paper sets out from a global definition of phonetics as "the study of the spoken medium of language" in the broadest sense, whose goal is the description, modelling and explanation of speech communication in the languages of the world. Within this overall scientific frame, three general perspectives are distinguished -"speech signal analysis", "historical linguistics and sound change", "phonetics of the languages of the world" -under which a wide array of specific questions, including applications, e.g. in language teaching, speech therapy and speech technology, may be subsumed. The three perspectives are outlined individually and in relation to each other, also with regard to their separate historical developments in the study of language and speech. The modern integration of the three perspectives into the unified paradigm of "phonetic or experimental phonology" is then illustrated with reference to recent research at some leading phonetics labs around the world. From this examination of past history and present-day state-of-the-art of what is considered to be the core paradigm for phonetic study, conclusions are drawn for future research and teaching on the basis of this paradigm. In the shaping of phonetics as a scientific discipline, a strong plea is put forward for scientific, explanatory integration rather than modular, taxonomic diversification of the subject