Albert, Aviad

Elsässer, Nathalie

Kampschulte, Zarah

Kleen, Caroline

Manzoni-Luxenburger, Judith

Zahner-Ritter, Katharina

English

BieColl - Bielefeld eCollections

„Question or Statement?” Interpretation of truncated nuclear falling contours by  L2 listeners compared to German natives Zarah Kampschulte1, Caroline Kleen1, Nathalie Elsässer1,  Judith Manzoni-Luxenburger1, Aviad Albert1,2 & Katharina Zahner-Ritter1 1 Phonetics, University of Trier, 2Phonetics, University of Cologne   Intonational research has revealed differences in how speakers of different languages and varieties accommodate suboptimal segmental contexts with little sonorant material [1-6]. Durational adjustments or adaptations to the contour (e.g., by truncating it or making it steeper) are common strategies. German speakers tend to cut-off nuclear falling contours when sonorant material runs short, such that underlying rising-falling contours may surface as rises (Fig. 1). This makes f0 ambiguous as to a statement or question reading [7] and may hence provide challenges for listeners in inferring the intended meaning. In these cases, L1 German listeners use durational cues [8] or may rely on spectral information [9], but we do not yet know whether truncated contours present learners (L2 listeners) with difficulties in interpreting the intended linguistic meaning, particularly when L1 and L2 use different compensation strategies.  The present study starts filling this gap by comparing German L1 (5 f, 10 m, Æ = 26.9) and L2 listeners on their ability to interpret the communicative function (statement vs. question) of German nuclear falling and rising contours in optimal (disyllabic) and suboptimal (monosyllabic) segmental contexts in a forced-choice perception experiment. If truncated falls are indeed difficult to be interpreted as statements, accuracy rate for falling contours in the suboptimal segmental context is expected to be lower compared to optimal contexts where all necessary information is available for listeners. We included proficiency-matched L2 listeners with different L1s to additionally assess cross-linguistic influence: so far, 11 Luxembourgish (9 f, 1 m, 1 d, Æ = 32.9 yrs, Æ DIALANG score [10] = 39.1) and 19 Syrian Arabic listeners (4 f, 15 m, Æ = 29.6 yrs, Æ DIALANG = 40.4); testing of L1 British English underway. In the experiment [11], L1 and L2 listeners were presented with 36 German two-word strings of the sort Herr/Frau Nachname?! in which the surnames were short monosyllables (‘suboptimal context’ that leads to truncation in falling contours, e.g., Schiff [ʃɪf], Saff [zaf], Kuss [kʊs]) or disyllables (‘optimal context’ that allows the full intonation contour, e.g., Schiefer [ˈʃiːfɐ], Safer [ˈzaːfɐ], Kußer [ˈku:sɐ]). The strings were recorded by a German speaker with falling (L+H* L-%) or rising intonation (L* H-^H%) to either match an immediately following statement (“Nice to see you!”) or a question context (“Is it you?”). Listeners’ task was to decide whether a given string (Herr/Frau Nachname) matched the statement or question context. If listeners’ response matched the intended meaning, it was coded as “correct”.  Figure 3 shows the proportions of correct responses for the three listener groups and conditions. Results around 0.5 reflect chance level; results close to zero a systematic use of available cues, with an opposite interpretation. Only few Germans were close to chance with monosyllables, suggesting that they do not have particular difficulties in interpreting the intended communicative function in suboptimal conditions. Luxemburgish listeners show a similar pattern, with only a few listeners exhibiting the systematic opposite interpretation for both monosyllabic and disyllabic names. For Arabic listeners, many responses are around chance, for both monosyllabic names and for falling contours in general, suggesting general difficulty in this group. To analyse the available cues in suboptimal contexts, we used the ProPer toolbox [12] to measure the shape of f0 within syllabic intervals in terms of the Synchrony metric [13]. There are subtle yet reliable differences in the shape of the rising contours between the two conditions such that the rise is steeper in monosyllabic names when the intended contour is rising rather than falling (Fig. 2). We are currently designing a series of experiments and run further acoustic analyses to pinpoint the cues L1 and L2 listeners use for interpretation when the f0 contour is ambiguous (Fig. 1-2).  P&P 18, 6-7 October 2022, BielefeldLicensed under CC BY 4.0doi:10.11576/pundp2022-1055                Monosyllabic surname                       Disyllabic surname   Figure 1 (above) shows Periograms [12] that present enriched f0 contours in purple of 4 examples: 2 suboptimal contexts (monosyllabic surname, Kass, left half; truncated for falls, left most graph) and 2 optimal contexts (disyllabic surname, Kaßer, right half), in intended statement contour (falling, left) and question contour (rising, right). Figure 2 (left) shows aggregated values of Synchrony measurements [13] of falling (left) vs. rising (right) contours with the 9 monosyllabic names in the stimuli.   Figure 3 Proportion of correct responses for the three listener groups, split by segmental context and intonation condition.  References [1] Grabe, E., "Pitch accent realization in English and German," Journal of Phonetics, vol. 26, pp. 129-143, 1998. [2] Manzoni-Luxenburger, J., "Luxemburgische Intonation: System und Sprachkontakt," Luxemburg: Melusina Press, 2021. [3] Rathcke, T., "How truncating are ‘truncating languages'? Evidence from Russian and German," Phonetica, vol. 73, pp. 194-228, 2017. [4] Yu, J. and Zahner, K., "Truncation and compression in Southern German and Australian English," in Proceedings of Interspeech 2019, Hyderabad, India, 2018, pp. 1833-1837. [5] Hanssen, J., Peters, J., and Gussenhoven, C., "Responses to time pressure on phrase-final melodies in varieties of Dutch and West Frisian," Journal of Phonetics, vol. 93, p. 101150, 2022. [6] Grice, M., Savino, M., and Roettger, T., "Tune-text negotiation: the effect of intonation on vowel duration," in Proceedings of the 19th ICPhS, Melbourne, Australia, 2019, pp. 562-566. [7] Niebuhr, O., Bergherr, J., Huth, S., Lill, C., and Neuschulz, J., "Intonationsfragen hintergragt - Die Vielschichtigkeit der prosodischen Unterschiede zwischen Aussage- und Fragesätzen mit deklarativer Syntax," Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik, vol. 77, pp. 304-346, 2010. [8] Rathcke, T., "On the neutralizing status of truncation in intonation: A perception study of boundary tones in German and Russian," Journal of Phonetics, vol. 41, pp. 172-185, 2013. [9] Niebuhr, O., "On the perception of “segmental intonation”: F0 context effects on sibilant identification in German," EURASIP Journal on Audio, Speech, and Music Processing, vol. 2017, pp. 1-20, 2017. [10] Alderson, J. C., "Diagnosing foreign language proficiency: The interface between learning and assessment," ed: A&C Black, 2005. [11] Leiner, D. J., "SoSci Survey (current version: Version 3.1.06, Available at http://www.soscisurvey.com," ed, 2019. [12] Albert, A., Cangemi, F., Ellison, T. M., and Grice, M., "ProPer: PROsodic analysis with periodic energy [Computer Software]. OSF. oi:10.17605/OSF.IO/28EA5," 2022. [13] Cangemi, F., Albert, A., and Grice, M., "Modelling intonation: Beyond segments and tonal targets," in Proceedings of the 19th ICPhS. Melbourne, Australia, 2019.  051015fall riseIntended intonation contourSynchrony (%)NameKassKissKussSaffSchaffSchiffSchuffSiffSuffSynchrony: monosyllabic names (suboptimal)● ●●●●●●●●●●● ● ● ●●●●●●●●●● ●● ●●●●●●●●● ●●●●● ●●●●●●●●● ●● ●●●●● ●●●●●●●● ●●● ●●●●● ●●●●●●● ●● ●●●●●● ●● ●● ●●●● ●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●● ●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●● ●●●● ●●●●● ●●● ●●●●German Luxembourgish Syrian Arabicmonosyllabic surname disyllabic surname monosyllabic surname disyllabic surname monosyllabic surname disyllabic surname0.000.250.500.751.00Segmental contextProportion of correct responsesIntonation●●nuclear fallnuclear riseP&P 18, 6-7 October 2022, BielefeldLicensed under CC BY 4.0doi:10.11576/pundp2022-1055

„Question or Statement?” Interpretation of truncated nuclear falling contours by L2 listeners compared to German natives

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„Question or Statement?” Interpretation of truncated nuclear falling contours by L2 listeners compared to German natives

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