Effects of syllable structure on intonation identification in Neapolitan Italian

International audienceIn Neapolitan Italian, nuclear rises are later in yes/no questions (L*+H) than in narrow focus statements (L+H*). Also, the H target is later in closed syllable items than in open syllable ones. In three identification tasks, we found that, when stimuli are ambiguous between questions and statements, listeners exploit the information on the precise alignment within the syllable to identify sentence type. This effect depends on durational constraints, i.e., the perceptual location of the H target is calculated relative to the actual duration of the vowel. Our results suggest that phonetic variability plays a role in shaping intonational categories and support models in which segmental and prosodic information are processed in a parallel fashion

Effects of tonal alignment on lexical identification in Italian

The aim of this paper is to examine the role of tonal alignment in Italian variety spoken in Naples. We focused on the effects of intonation in the perception of minimal pairs contrasting in consonant duration. Spectrographic analyses show that the timing of pitch accent varies with the syllable structure (see also [1]). In open syllable (CV), the pitch peak is realized within the stressed vowel, while in the closed syllable (CVC) the peak is reached at the end of the accented syllable, associated with the last consonant. In order to analyze these effects, series of words contrasting in consonant duration and inserted in the same segmental environment were produced by a native speaker. Two kinds of manipulation were performed. First, we modified the length of the stressed vowel and the following consonant in five steps; then, the timing of the pitch peak was modified in four steps, too. Finally, a set of resynthesized stimuli was created by the combination of all the different steps of duration and pitch: this set constituted our basis for the perception experiments. We asked thirteen Neapolitan people to listen to the stimuli, and to identify them with either one word or the other of each pair. Our results show that manipulation of intonation was significant for the stimuli coming from the CVC words. That is, a garden path effect (or: a shift in responses) related to the timing of the pitch peak was found. These results lend support to the hypothesis that the listeners use temporal alignment for the perception of segmental identity and that the contribution of intonation both in production and in perception is a fundamental source of linguistic information

Effects of tonal alignment on lexical identification in Italian

The aim of this paper is to examine the role of tonal alignment in Italian variety spoken in Naples. We focused on the effects of intonation in the perception of minimal pairs contrasting in consonant duration. Spectrographic analyses show that the timing of pitch accent varies with the syllable structure (see also [1]). In open syllable (CV), the pitch peak is realized within the stressed vowel, while in the closed syllable (CVC) the peak is reached at the end of the accented syllable, associated with the last consonant. In order to analyze these effects, series of words contrasting in consonant duration and inserted in the same segmental environment were produced by a native speaker. Two kinds of manipulation were performed. First, we modified the length of the stressed vowel and the following consonant in five steps; then, the timing of the pitch peak was modified in four steps, too. Finally, a set of resynthesized stimuli was created by the combination of all the different steps of duration and pitch: this set constituted our basis for the perception experiments. We asked thirteen Neapolitan people to listen to the stimuli, and to identify them with either one word or the other of each pair. Our results show that manipulation of intonation was significant for the stimuli coming from the CVC words. That is, a garden path effect (or: a shift in responses) related to the timing of the pitch peak was found. These results lend support to the hypothesis that the listeners use temporal alignment for the perception of segmental identity and that the contribution of intonation both in production and in perception is a fundamental source of linguistic information

Le rôle de la variabilité phonétique dans la représentation des contours intonatifs et de leur sens

Un problème « classique » qui se pose aux linguistes face au signal acoustique réside dans sa formidable variabilité. Dans les études segmentales, la variabilité a longtemps été considérée comme inutile à la communication. Or, plus récemment, il a été mis en évidence que les variations systématiques du signal peuvent être exploitées pour la perception des catégories phonologiques, et cela même lorsqu’elles sont distribuées globalement dans l’énoncé. Dans cette thèse, le problème de la variabi..

Phonetic and phonological imitation of intonation in two varieties of Italian

International audienceThe aim of this study was to test whether both phonetic and phonological representations of intonation can be rapidly modified when imitating utterances belonging to a different regional variety of the same language. Our main hypothesis was that tonal alignment, just as other phonetic features of speech, would be rapidly modified by Italian speakers when imitating pitch accents of a different (Southern) variety of Italian. In particular, we tested whether Bari Italian (BI) speakers would produce later peaks for their native rising L + H * (question pitch accent) in the process of imitating Neapolitan Italian (NI) rising L * + H accents. Also, we tested whether BI speakers are able to modify other phonetic properties (pitch level) as well as phonological characteristics (changes in tonal composition) of the same contour. In a follow-up study, we tested if the reverse was also true, i.e., whether NI speakers would produce earlier peaks within the L * + H accent in the process of imitating the L + H * of BI questions, despite the presence of a contrast between two rising accents in this variety. Our results show that phonetic detail of tonal alignment can be successfully modified by both BI and NI speakers when imitating a model speaker of the other variety. The hypothesis of a selective imitation process preventing alignment modifications in NI was hence not supported. Moreover the effect was significantly stronger for low frequency words. Participants were also able to imitate other phonetic cues, in that they modified global utterance pitch level. Concerning phonological convergence, speakers modified the tonal specification of the edge tones in order to resemble that of the other variety by either suppressing or increasing the presence of a final H%. Hence, our data show that intonation imitation leads to fast modification of both phonetic and phonological intonation representations including detail of tonal alignment and pitch scaling

On the role of prosody in disambiguating wh-exclamatives and wh-interrogatives in Cosenza Italian

International audienceThis work investigates the role of prosody in the perception wh-exclamatives and (information seeking) wh-interrogatives in Cosenza Italian. We used reaction times (RTs) as a diagnostic of listeners' (in)security in sentence type disambiguation during a two-forced choice identification task. Our results show that listeners identify the two sentence types after the end of the utterance in most of the trials, and not before it. This suggests that prosodic cues that occur before the end of the utterance (e.g., in the prenuclear section of the intonational contour) are not strong enough by themselves guide the pragmatic interpretation of the utterances. Furthermore, our study shows that exclamatives are processed faster than interrogatives, but this effect disappears when segmental duration is taken into account

Feeding behavior of gray whales in relation to patch dynamics of their benthic prey

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The influence of metrical constraints on direct imitation across French varieties

International audienceRecent studies have investigated phonetic and phonological direct dialect imitation in intonation, though no study has yet explored metrical convergence. In this study we therefore test the assumption that speakers of standard French can mimic the metrical properties of a Southern French variety, having a different foot structure, by inserting a schwa either in word-final or in word-medial position. In line with our hypothesis, Standard French speakers were able to produce a greater number of schwas in the Imitation phase, with the result of inserting a weak syllable. Moreover, the effect was stronger word-medially, which we explain through a phonological constraint preventing a left headed foot to appear in word-final position

Length Matters: Informational Load in Ambiguity Resolution

International audienceIn this paper, we will compare prosodic and pragmatic approaches to the role of constituent length in attachment ambiguities. Lengthening a constituent affects its informativity: longer constituents are usually less predictable (Levy & Florian, 2007) and demand a higher processing load than shorter ones (Almor, 1999). Following neo-Gricean accounts (Levinson, 1987 and 1991), increased informational load needs to be justified. This justification is achieved more easily when the long constituent conveys new information and when it relates to central elements of the utterance. Informational load is, however, not a simple question of length in numbers of characters or syllables but more likely a question of amount of information. In three off-line experiments using a cloze task, we will compare the effect of lengthening ambiguous prepositional phrases as in [1a/b/c] either by lengthening a city name or by adding information about the city. We will show that only lengthening by adding information increases attachment to a more central element of the utterance. These results will be discussed based on prosodic and pragmatic factors explaining the role of constituent length for attachment ambiguities. [1] Peter met the doctor of the lawyer from a. Apt. / b. Aix-en-Provence / c. the beautiful city of Apt

ACOUSTIC CUES OF PROSODIC BOUNDARIES IN GERMAN AT DIFFERENT SPEECH RATE

International audienceThis paper reports results of a production study on prosodic phrase boundaries at different speech rates. Our research question was to examine which acoustic cues (F0, intensity and duration) change as a function of speech rate both before and after prosodic phrase boundaries. We investigated identical sentences that differed in the placement of the prosodic boundary, i.e. before or after the critical word. Based on the data of 25 German speakers, duration was the main acoustic cue that speakers altered when marking prosodic boundaries at different speech rates. More specifically, words which appear before the boundary had longer durations, similarly to pauses at phrase-final boundaries, even if the speech rate increases. Intensity does also play a role: in faster speech words are produced with a higher intensity. Finally, F0 max was not changed on the critical words but rather it altered in comparison to F max of the preceding word