Prosodic Focus Within and Across Languages
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Prosodic Processes in Language and Music
Prosodic Processes in Language and Music Maartje Schreuder Copyright © 2006 by Maartje Schreuder Cover design: Hanna van der Haar Printed by Print Partners Ipskamp, Enschede The work in this thesis has been carried out under the auspices of the Research School of Behavioral and Cognitive Neurosciences (BCN), Groningen Groningen Dissertations in Linguistics 60 ISSN 0928-0030 ISBN 90-367-2637-9 RIJKSUNIVERSITEIT GRONINGEN Prosodic Processes in Language and Music Proefschrift ter verkrijging van het doctoraat in de Letteren aan de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen op gezag van de Rector Magnificus, dr. F. Zwarts, in het openbaar te verdedigen op donderdag 15 juni 2006 om 13:15 uur door Maartje Johanneke Schreuder geboren op 25 augustus 1974 te Groningen Promotor: Prof. dr. J. Koster Copromotor: Dr. D.G. Gilbers Beoordelingscommissie: Prof. dr. J. Hoeksema Prof. dr. C. Gussenhoven Prof. dr. P. Hagoort Preface Many people have helped me to finish this thesis. First of all I am indebted to my supervisor Dicky Gilbers. Throughout this disseration, I speak of ‘we’. That is not because I have some double personality which allows me to do all the work in collaboration, but because Dicky was so enthusiastic about the project that we did all the experiments together. The main chapters are based on papers we wrote together for conference proceedings, books, and journals. This collaboration with Dicky always was very motivating and pleasant. I will never forget the conferences we visited together, especially the fun we had trying to find our way in Vienna, and through the subterranean corridors in the castle in Imatra, Finland. -
On the Theoretical Implications of Cypriot Greek Initial Geminates
<LINK "mul-n*">"mul-r16">"mul-r8">"mul-r19">"mul-r14">"mul-r27">"mul-r7">"mul-r6">"mul-r17">"mul-r2">"mul-r9">"mul-r24"> <TARGET "mul" DOCINFO AUTHOR "Jennifer S. Muller"TITLE "On the theoretical implications of Cypriot Greek initial geminates"SUBJECT "JGL, Volume 3"KEYWORDS "geminates, representation, phonology, Cypriot Greek"SIZE HEIGHT "220"WIDTH "150"VOFFSET "4"> On the theoretical implications of Cypriot Greek initial geminates* Jennifer S. Muller The Ohio State University Cypriot Greek contrasts singleton and geminate consonants in word-initial position. These segments are of particular interest to phonologists since two divergent representational frameworks, moraic theory (Hayes 1989) and timing-based frameworks, including CV or X-slot theory (Clements and Keyser 1983, Levin 1985), account for the behavior of initial geminates in substantially different ways. The investigation of geminates in Cypriot Greek allows these differences to be explored. As will be demonstrated in a formal analysis of the facts, the patterning of geminates in Cypriot is best accounted for by assuming that the segments are dominated by abstract timing units such as X- or C-slots, rather than by a unit of prosodic weight such as the mora. Keywords: geminates, representation, phonology, Cypriot Greek 1. Introduction Cypriot Greek is of particular interest, not only because it is one of the few varieties of Modern Greek maintaining a consonant length contrast, but more importantly because it exhibits this contrast in word-initial position: péfti ‘Thursday’ vs. ppéfti ‘he falls’.Although word-initial geminates are less common than their word-medial counterparts, they are attested in dozens of the world’s languages in addition to Cypriot Greek. -
Prosody Analysis and Modeling for Cantonese Text-To-Speech Li Yu
Prosody Analysis and Modeling for Cantonese Text-to-Speech Li Yu Jia A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Philosophy in Electronic Engineering © The Chinese University of Hong Kong July 2003 The Chinese University of Hong Kong holds the copyright of this thesis. Any person(s) intending to use a part or whole of the materials in the thesis in a proposed publication must seek copyright release from the Dean of the Graduate School. 权 n • )1 Acknowledgment I am greatly indebted to Prof. Tan Lee for his supervision and insightful advice throughout this research. I also wish to give my thanks to Prof. P.C. Ching, Prof. Y.T. Chan, Prof. X.G. Xia and Dr. Frank Soong for their valuable suggestions. I would like to appreciate Ms. Y. Qian for her knowledge sharing. I would also thank Dr. W.K. Lo, Ms. K.Y. Kwan, Mr. K.M. Law, Mr. W. Lau and Ms. W. Lam for their technical support. Thanks are due to Ms. P.W. Wong. Without her assistance in recording speech data, this research cannot be completed successfully. I would like to thank all the colleagues and friends in DSP laboratory for giving me the most enjoyable and inspiring working environment. I would also thank all the participants for their feedback and comments on my work. To name only some of them: Mr. Arthur Luk, Ms. L.Y. Ngan, Ms. P. Kam, Mr. Herman Yau, Ms. C. Yang, Ms. S.W. Lee and Ms. Y.Y. Tarn. -
Phonological Elision in Malaysian Cantonese Casual Speech
PHONOLOGICAL ELISION IN MALAYSIAN CANTONESE CASUAL SPEECH ONG YIN HSIAR NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE 2007 PHONOLOGICAL ELISION IN MALAYSIAN CANTONESE CASUAL SPEECH ONG YIN HSIAR (B. ARTS), UM A THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS DEPARTMENT OF CHINESE STUDIES NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE 2007 Acknowledgement How does a person say “thank you” when there are so many people to thank? This thesis is dedicated to my family, who encourage me to pursue my dream without a fear. They are my mentors and heroes that make my life complete. In my course of learning at NUS, I have had the benefit of wisdom from three supervisors. A/P Lee Cher Leng took me under her wing at the crucial moment when I was nearing completion of this research; Dr. Yan Xiuhong offered me insightful comments and guidance after my first supervisor Wee Lian Hee left NUS. But it was also Lian Hee who started me on the journey of Linguistics. Even though he had left NUS, modern technology had made it possible for me to obtain much help from him. I would have been lost if not for his suggestions and patience in keeping an eye almost word-by-word in my thesis. I would also like to thank everyone who contributed in any way to the completion of this project. I am particularly grateful for the National University of Singapore Research Scholarship (2005-2007), without which my life would be peppered with much physical hardship. On fieldwork, recordings and phonetic analyses, I am indebted to A/P Robbie Goh, Mr. -
Contrastive Modelling of the Intonation of Recapitulatory Echo Interrogative Sentences in Modern American English and Cuban Spanish
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Nottingham ePrints Garcia Romero, Gilberto (2013) Contrastive modelling of the intonation of recapitulatory echo interrogative sentences in modern American English and Cuban Spanish. MA(Res) thesis, University of Nottingham. Access from the University of Nottingham repository: http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/13527/1/AN_INTONATIONAL_ANALYSIS_OF_THE_INTERR OGATIVE_SYSTEMS_IN_MODERN_ENGLISH_AND_CUBAN_SPANISH_2012.pdf Copyright and reuse: The Nottingham ePrints service makes this work by researchers of the University of Nottingham available open access under the following conditions. · Copyright and all moral rights to the version of the paper presented here belong to the individual author(s) and/or other copyright owners. · To the extent reasonable and practicable the material made available in Nottingham ePrints has been checked for eligibility before being made available. · Copies of full items can be used for personal research or study, educational, or not- for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge provided that the authors, title and full bibliographic details are credited, a hyperlink and/or URL is given for the original metadata page and the content is not changed in any way. · Quotations or similar reproductions must be sufficiently acknowledged. Please see our full end user licence at: http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/end_user_agreement.pdf A note on versions: The version presented here may differ from the published version or from the version of record. If you wish to cite this item you are advised to consult the publisher’s version. Please see the repository url above for details on accessing the published version and note that access may require a subscription. -
Tones in Hakka Infant-Directed Speech: an Acoustic Perspective*
Article Language and Linguistics Tones in Hakka Infant-Directed Speech: 15(3) 341–390 © The Author(s) 2014 An Acoustic Perspective* Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1606822X14520662 lin.sagepub.com Ming-chung Cheng1 and Kuo-chih Chang2 National United University1 Taiwan Taluen Junior High School2 This study explores lexical tones in Hakka infant-directed speech (IDS) in comparison with adult-directed speech (ADS), investigating whether lexical tones are hyperarticulated and distorted in Hakka IDS. Special attention is directed at the tonal contrast between unchecked and checked tones, an issue never investigated previously. Sixteen mother–infant dyads participated in this study, with infants’ age ranging from 6 to 26 months. The speech stimuli contained 18 disyllabic phrases in the form of C1V1C2V(C), where C1 and C2 are voiceless consonants and V1 (a corner vowel [i, a, u]) carried the target tone. Mothers interacted with their infants and the researcher naturally at their homes. Interviews were recorded as IDS and ADS. For each recording, the first two clear tokens of each target tone were segmented out for acoustic analysis of fundamental frequency (F0) by PRAAT. Results show that lexical tones in IDS are phonetically enhanced by exaggerated F0 contour, elevated F0 mean, widened F0 range, steepened F0 slope, lengthened F0 duration, and expanded tonal distance. Yet they are not distorted because they can still be distinguished by one or more F0 cues. All hyperarticulated cues contribute to perceptually salient linguistic signals, and help infants with tonal identification and categorical learning. More significantly, checked and unchecked tones have different tonal behaviors in ADS and IDS. -
An Autosegmental/Metrical Analysis of Serbo-Croatian Intonation *
AN AUTOSEGMENTAL/METRICAL ANALYSIS OF SERBO-CROATIAN INTONATION * Svetlana Godjevac Abstract Based on the qualitative analysis of the Fo contours of wide range ofutterances (broad focus declaratives, broad focus questions, nar row focus declaratives, narrow focus questions, vocative chant, and prompting intonation) utterred by nine native speakers, an autoseg mental/metrical analysis of Standard Selbo-Croatian intonation is pro posed. This analysis argues for sparse specification of tones, contra Inkelas and Zee (1988), and two levels of prosodic phrasing: the phonological word and the intonational phrase. The phonological word is defined in te!lDS of a lexical pitch accent and an initial word boundary tone, whereas the intonational phrase is a domain defined by pitch range manipulations (expansion, compression, reset, downstep) and final intonational phrase boundary_ tones. 1 Introduction Standard Serbo-Croatian (SC) is a pitch-accent language. All analyses (Browne & Mccawley 1965 (B&M), Inkelas & Zee 1988 (l&Z), Kostic 1983, Lehiste & Ivie 1963, •r would like to express my gratitude to Mary Beckman, Chris Barker, Allison Blodgett, Rebecca Her man, Molly Homer, Tsan Huang, Ilse Lehiste, Gina Taranto, and Pauline Welby. I also wish to thank my informants: Dragana Aleksic, Ljubomir Bjelica, Ana Devic, Ksenija Djuranovic, Svetislav Jovanovic, Jasna Kragalott, Svetlana Li.kic, and Branislav Unkovic for their patience and kindness in providing the data. All errors are mine. 79 . SVETLANA GODJEVAC 1986 (L&I), Nikolic 1970, Stevanovic 1989, Gvozdanovic (1980), inter alia) recognize four different types of accents: short falling, long falling, short rising, and long rising. In this paper I present an analysis of surface tones of these accent types in different sentential environments, including broad-focus and narrow-focu.s utterances, citation form, vocative chant, prompting intonation, and questions. -
Automatic Prosodic Variations Modelling for Language and Dialect Discrimination Jean-Luc Rouas
Automatic prosodic variations modelling for language and dialect discrimination Jean-Luc Rouas To cite this version: Jean-Luc Rouas. Automatic prosodic variations modelling for language and dialect discrimination. IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech and Language Processing, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 2007, 15 (6), 10.1109/TASL.2007.900094. hal-00657977 HAL Id: hal-00657977 https://hal.inria.fr/hal-00657977 Submitted on 9 Jan 2012 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. 1 Automatic prosodic variations modelling for language and dialect discrimination Jean-Luc Rouas Abstract— This paper addresses the problem of modelling recognition [5], notably Adami’s system [6]. More recently, prosody for language identification. The aim is to create a system systems using syllable-scale features have been under research, that can be used prior to any linguistic work to show if prosodic although their aim is to model acoustic/phonotactic properties differences among languages or dialects can be automatically determined. In previous papers, we defined a prosodic unit, the of languages [7] or also prosodic cues [8]. pseudo-syllable. Rhythmic modelling has proven the relevance of Beside the use of prosody to improve the performances of the pseudo-syllable unit for automatic language identification. -
Vowel Reduction Rds: an Instance of Foot Recursion? Or a Language-Specific Prosodic Unit? Introduction
Reduction in in Phonology 2014, MIT! September 19-21 2014! ! Aleksei Nazarov! University of Massachusetts Amherst! [email protected] Outline Hypothesis: Dutch has prosodic domain larger than syllable, smaller than foot “Reduction Domain” (RD): full vowel σ + optional schwa σs Evidence from morphotactics and vowel reduction RDs: an instance of foot recursion? or a language-specific prosodic unit? Introduction English: only schwa in (non-word final) unstressed position ɑ̀gmɛ̀ntéɪʃən ~ ɑ̀gməntéɪʃən (after Pater 2000) Dutch: both full vowels and schwa in unstressed position má.jo.nɛ́:.zə "mayonnaise" má.jə.stɛ̀it "(Your) Majesty" Introduction Dutch standardly analyzed as a quantity- sensitive trochaic language (Oostendorp 1997 and references therein) LL-final words: penultimate main stress (mà.ka)(ró.ni) “macaroni” LH-final words: antepenultimate main stress le(ó.ni)(dɑ̀s) “Leonidas” Introduction Antepenultimate stress: Non-Finality forces stress to shift to penultimate foot if last syllable is heavy (Oostendorp 1997, references therein) This yields antepenultimate stress when the penult is light (i.e., a foot dependent) leonidɑs → le(ó.ni)(dɑ̀s); *le(ò.ni)(dɑ́́s) Introduction Reality of unstressed full vowels: If all full vowels were stressed, avoidance of final main stress could never yield antepenultimate stress leonidɑs → *le(ò)(ní)(dɑ̀s) leonidɑs ?→ le(ó)(nì)(dɑ̀s) Introduction Standard metrical analyses of Dutch: (mà.jo)(nɛ́:.zə) (má.jə)(stɛ̀it) Van der Hulst & Moortgat (1980) propose: Dutch has nested foot structure Smaller foot -
The Role of Pitch Reset in Perception at Discourse Boundaries
ICPhS XVII Regular Session Hong Kong, 17-21 August 2011 THE ROLE OF PITCH RESET IN PERCEPTION AT DISCOURSE BOUNDARIES Hsin-Yi Lin & Janice Fon Graduate Institute of Linguistics, National Taiwan University, Taiwan [email protected]; [email protected] ABSTRACT pitch contours tend to be the same or on the same declining track [4, 5]. Such a melodic continuity The present study is targeted to investigate how can be broken by pitch reset for speakers to mark pitch reset as a boundary correlate functions in shift of topic or segmentation in discourse. The indicating structural information in discourse for second aspect is its ability to reflect hierarchical listeners. Two experiments were conducted: one status of a boundary. Many studies have indicated was a boundary detection test, and the other was a that the amount of pitch reset is bigger across boundary hierarchy rating test. Results of both discourse segments than within [6, 8, 11], experiments indicated that listeners indeed rely on suggesting that as boundaries become bigger, the the presence and the strength of pitch reset in amount of pitch reset is larger too, making it a nice decoding hierarchical segmentation in discourse. indicator in reflecting boundary hierarchy. Keywords: pitch reset, boundary correlate, As established in the above studies, speakers discourse boundary, discourse hierarchy, prosody use pitch reset, among other cues, to encode segmentation and hierarchical structure in 1. INTRODUCTION discourse. Therefore, the present study aims itself In human communication, discourse structure on investigating whether listeners also use this cue plays an important role in providing speakers with to decode discourse structure in speech. -
The Phonology of Tone and Intonation
This page intentionally left blank The Phonology of Tone and Intonation Tone and Intonation are two types of pitch variation, which are used by speak- ers of many languages in order to give shape to utterances. More specifically, tone encodes morphemes, and intonation gives utterances a further discoursal meaning that is independent of the meanings of the words themselves. In this comprehensive survey, Carlos Gussenhoven provides an up-to-date overview of research into tone and intonation, discussing why speakers vary their pitch, what pitch variations mean, and how they are integrated into our grammars. He also explains why intonation in part appears to be universally understood, while at other times it is language-specific and can lead to misunderstandings. The first eight chapters concern general topics: phonetic aspects of pitch mod- ulation; typological notions (stress, accent, tone, and intonation); the distinction between phonetic implementation and phonological representation; the paralin- guistic meaning of pitch variation; the phonology and phonetics of downtrends; developments from the Pierrehumbert–Beckman model; and tone and intona- tion in Optimality Theory. In chapters 9–15, the book’s central arguments are illustrated with comprehensive phonological descriptions – partly in OT – of the tonal and intonational systems of six languages, including Japanese, French, and English. Accompanying sound files can be found on the author’s web site: http://www.let.kun.nl/pti Carlos Gussenhoven is Professor and Chair of General and Experimental Phonology at the University of Nijmegen. He has previously published On the Grammar and Semantics of Sentence Accents (1994), English Pronunciation for Student Teachers (co-authored with A. -
Acquisition of Hebrew Phonoloy
Pre-final version – comments are welcome To appear in: Berman, Ruth (ed.) Acquisition and Development of Hebrew: From Infancy to Adolescence. John Benjamins. PATHS AND STAGES IN THE ACQUISITION OF HEBREW PHONOLOGICAL WORD Avivit Ben-David & Outi Bat-El Hadassah Academic College & Tel-Aviv University The acquisition of Hebrew phonology has started gaining attention during the last two decades, with quantitative and theoretical studies on the distribution and development of various phonological structures. In this paper, we follow the acquisition of the phonological word in Hebrew, attending to the prosodic word (number of syllables), the foot (stress patterns), the syllable and its sub-syllabic units (onset and coda), and the segments and their features. For each type of phonological structure, we (a) provide distributional facts in Hebrew, in order to evaluate the role of frequency in phonological development; (b) discuss the constraints active during the different stages of development; and (c) introduce the simplification strategies children employ on their way to faithful targets. At the end we consider the resources children use during their phonological development. Key words: language acquisition, Hebrew, phonology, prosodic word, syllable, onset, coda, stress, trochaic bias, segments, features, frequency, nature vs. nurture. 1. Introduction When we start studying children’s language development, using phonetics as our data source, our first encounter with children’s grammar lies within the domain of phonology, i.e. the mental system that categorizes and organizes the phonetics of speech. Data and generalizations are approached from two angles: (a) the principles active in the children’s phonological system during every stage of development, and (b) the correspondence between the children’s productions and the adults’ targets.