Comparing word and syllable prominence rated by naïve listeners

Prominence has been widely studied on the word level and the syllable level. An extensive study comparing the two approaches is missing in the literature. This study investigates how word and syllable prominence relate to each other in German. We find that perceptual ratings based on the word level are more extreme than those based on the syllable level. The correlations between word prominence and acoustic features are greater than the correlations between syllable prominence and acoustic features

Obtaining prominence judgments from naïve listeners – Influence of rating scales, linguistic levels and normalisation

A frequently replicated finding is that higher frequency words tend to be shorter and contain more strongly reduced vowels. However, little is known about potential differences in the articulatory gestures for high vs. low frequency words. The present study made use of electromagnetic articulography to investigate the production of two German vowels, [i] and [a], embedded in high and low frequency words. We found that word frequency differently affected the production of [i] and [a] at the temporal as well as the gestural level. Higher frequency of use predicted greater acoustic durations for long vowels; reduced durations for short vowels; articulatory trajectories with greater tongue height for [i] and more pronounced downward articulatory trajectories for [a]. These results show that the phonological contrast between short and long vowels is learned better with experience, and challenge both the Smooth Signal Redundancy Hypothesis and current theories of German phonology

Untersuchungen zur Funktion des Octopamins bei der Streßantwort von Periplaneta americana L.

Die Hypothese, dass Octopamin bei Insekten in einer Stresssituation als Hormon eine dem Adrenalin/Noradrenalin bei Vertebraten vergleichbare Bedeutung habe, wurde am Beispiel von Periplaneta americana L. untersucht und widerlegt. Durch Aufzeichnung der CO2-Abgaberaten wurden Stoffwechselrate und Atemverhalten im Ruhezustand und nach Einwirkung verschiedener Stressoren registriert. Die Octopaminkonzentration wurde mittels Radioenzymassay bestimmt. Stress bewirkte keine Erhöhung seiner Konzentration in der Hämolymphe (3 x 10-8 mol l-1). In vitro steigerte Octopamin dosisabhängig die Herzschlagfrequenz des Dorsalgefäßes und des Antennenherzens und bewirkte dosisabhängig an der für Ruhe- und Stressventilation verantwortlichen Muskulatur eine Relaxation. Die hohe Schwellenkonzentration (10-7 mol l-1) für diese Wirkungen in der Peripherie sprechen gegen eine hormonelle Funktion. Wahrscheinlich ist Octopamin als Neuromediator und örtlich abgegebenes Paramon an der Stressantwort beteiligt.The hypothesis that octopamine is a hormone of comparable importance to adrenaline/noradrenaline in vertebrates was investigated and refuted using Periplaneta americana L. as animal model. By recording the CO2 emission rates, metabolic rate and respiratory behaviour were registered in the resting state and after exposure to various stressors. Octopamine concentration was determined by radioenzyme assay. Stress did not increase the octopamine concentration in the haemolymph (3 x 10-8 mol l-1). In vitro, octopamine dose-dependently increased the heart rate of the dorsal vessel and the antennal heart and dose-dependently induced relaxation in the muscles responsible for rest and stress ventilation. The high threshold concentration for these effects in the periphery (10-7 mol l-1) also argue against a hormonal effect of octopamine in insects. Octopamine is probably involved in the stress response as a neuromediator and locally released and acting paramone

The effect of priming on the correlations between prominence ratings and acoustic features

Arnold D, Wagner P, Möbius B. The effect of priming on the correlations between prominence ratings and acoustic features. In: Prosodic Prominence: Perceptual and Automatic Identification (Speech Prosody 2010 Workshop). 2010: W1.02.In previous research we showed that the priming paradigm can be used to significantly alter the prominence ratings of subjects. In that study we only looked at the changes in the subjects’ ratings. In the present study, we analyzed the acoustic parameters of the stimuli used in the priming study and investigated the correlation between prominence ratings and acoustic parameters. The results show that priming has a significant effect on these correlations. The contribution of acoustic features on perceived prominence was found to depend on the prominence pattern. If a dominantly prominent syllable is present in a given utterance, f0 and intensity contribute most to the perceived prominence, while duration contributes most when no syllable is dominantly prominent. Index Terms: syllable, prominence, priming, acoustic correlate

Disentangling lexical, morphological, syntactic and semantic influences on German prominence – Evidence from a production study

Samlowski B, Wagner P, Möbius B. Disentangling lexical, morphological, syntactic and semantic influences on German prominence – Evidence from a production study. In: Proceedings of Interspeech 2012. 2012: 2406-2409.The aim of this paper is to examine effects on syllable prominence exerted by word and phrase boundaries, lexical stress, and sentence focus, and by the interactions between these factors. In a production study, German verb prefixes potentially forming prosodic minimal word pairs were systematically placed in a set of different contexts. Acoustic analyses showed a consistent effect of lexical stress on syllable prominence in both focused and unfocused sentence positions. When the verb was in sentence focus, even unstressed syllables in bisyllabic prefixes changed as a function of lexical stress. Varying sentence stress only had an effect on syllables in lexically stressed prefixes. While no effect of word boundary was found, unbound verb particles preceding phrase boundaries received the highest prominence values. Syllables in lexically stressed prefixes showed greater acoustic similarity with these unbound particles than did syllables in lexically unstressed prefixes

Phonetic Detail in German Syllable Pronunciation: Influences of Prosody and Grammar

Samlowski B, Möbius B, Wagner P. Phonetic Detail in German Syllable Pronunciation: Influences of Prosody and Grammar. Frontiers in Psychology. 2014;5:500.This study presents two experiments designed to disentangle various influences on syllable pronunciation. Target syllables were embedded in carrier sentences, read aloud by native German participants, and analyzed in terms of syllable and vowel duration, acoustic prominence, and spectral similarity. Both experiments revealed a complex interaction of different factors, as participants attempted to disambiguate semantically and syntactically ambiguous structures while at the same time distinguishing between important and unimportant information. The first experiment examined German verb prefixes that formed prosodic minimal pairs. Carrier sentences were formulated so as to systematically vary word stress, sentence focus, and the type of syntactic boundary following the prefix. We found clear effects of word stress on duration, prominence, and spectral similarity as well as a small influence of sentence focus on prominence levels of lexically stressed prefixes. While sentence boundaries were marked by particularly high prominence and duration values, hardly any effect was shown for word boundaries. The second experiment compared German function words which were segmentally identical but appeared in different grammatical roles. Here, definite articles were found to be shorter than relative pronouns and still shorter than demonstrative pronouns. As definite articles are also much more common than the other two lexical classes, effects of lemma frequency might also have played a role

Evaluating different rating scales for obtaining judgments of syllable prominence from naïve listeners

Streefkerk defines prominence as the perceptually outstanding parts in spoken language. An optimal rating scale for syllable prominence has not been found yet. This paper evaluates a 4-point, an 11-point, a 31-point, and a continuous scale for the rating of syllable prominence and gives support for scales using a higher number of levels. Priming effects found by Arnold, et al., could only be replicated using the 31-point scale

Evaluating different rating scales for obtaining judgments of syllable prominence from naïve listeners

Arnold D, Wagner P, Möbius B. Evaluating different rating scales for obtaining judgments of syllable prominence from naïve listeners. In: International Congress of the Phonetic Sciences. 2011: 252-255.Streefkerk [6] defines prominence as the perceptually outstanding parts in spoken language. An optimal rating scale for syllable prominence has not been found yet. This paper evaluates a 4-point, an 11-point, a 31-point, and a continuous scale for the rating of syllable prominence and gives support for scales using a higher number of levels. Priming effects found by Arnold, et al. [1], could only be replicated using the 31-point scale

The effect of priming on the correlations between prominence ratings and acoustic features

In previous research we showed that the priming paradigm can be used to significantly alter the prominence ratings of subjects. In that study we only looked at the changes in the subjects’ ratings. In the present study, we analyzed the acoustic parameters of the stimuli used in the priming study and investigated the correlation between prominence ratings and acoustic parameters. The results show that priming has a significant effect on these correlations. The contribution of acoustic features on perceived prominence was found to depend on the prominence pattern. If a dominantly prominent syllable is present in a given utterance, f0 and intensity contribute most to the perceived prominence, while duration contributes most when no syllable is dominantly prominent

Comparing word and syllable prominence rated by naive listeners

Arnold D, Möbius B, Wagner P. Comparing word and syllable prominence rated by naive listeners. In: Proceedings of Interspeech 2011. 2011: 1877-1880.Prominence has been widely studied on the word level and the syllable level. An extensive study comparing the two approaches is missing in the literature. This study investigates how word and syllable prominence relate to each other in German. We find that perceptual ratings based on the word level are more extreme than those based on the syllable level. The correlations between word prominence and acoustic features are greater than the correlations between syllable prominence and acoustic features