pitch peak timing in german
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Prosodic Signalling of (Un)Expected Information in South Swedish
Gilbert Ambrazaitis
Linguistics and PhoneticsCentre for Languages and Literature
Pitch Peak Timing in German...
... and English ...
peak timing → pragmatic contrast
How is this pragmatic contrast expressed...
● ...in Swedish in general?● ...in South Swedish in particular?
What is “this pragmatic contrast”?
● Difficult to capture by a single functional parameter (or semantic scale)
→ Start with “expected – unexpected”
The Swedish Word Accents
Example: “Jag har sett anden.”
→ Accent 1: “I have seen the duck.”→ Accent 2: “I have seen the ghost.”
South Swedish:
→ Accent 1: early pitch fall (peak at syllable onset)→ Accent 2: late pitch fall (peak at syllable offset)
Accent 1
Accent 2
General Research Questions
Swedish: Pitch timing is utilized on a lexical level.
● Can it still be used to express pragmatic contrasts – as in German and English?
● If yes, to what degree?● Different capacities for Accent 1 and Accent 2 ?
Original Accent 2
A Pilot Study: Hypotheses and Aims
Aim → a preliminary insight into the prosodic signalling of “(un)expected information” in South Swedish Accent 1 words in monosyllabic utterances
Two competing hypotheses
H1 – Accent 1 pitch fall is always early.
→ word accent contrast preservation (CP)→ Functional parameter “(un)expected” cannot cause a later timing
H2 – No word accent distinction for monosyllabic words.
→ word accent CP is irrelevant→ Timing may be affected by (un)expected information
Interactive Manipulation Experiment
“From Function to Signal”, sorry!
Subjects adjust acoustic parameters themselves until test utterance sounds
“expected”“neutral”“unexpected”
Material: monosyllabic utterances“Röd.” (red)“Blå.” (blue) “Gul.” (yellow)
Procedure and subjects
● Material recorded monotonously at medium pitch level by a native speaker of South Swedish
● Six subjects (2 female, 4 male), aged 30-58; ➔ Subject 4 = speaker of test material
● Subjects used praat manipulation windows
● Instructions in written form, 3 sheets:➔ (1) introduction, (2) instructions, (3) working sheet
Situational Setting
Introduction sheet
Two friends are having a small chat. A: ”By the way, Lasse has finally bought a new car!”B: ”Really! It’s high time! So what colour did he choose?”A: ”Blue” (or ”Yellow” or ”Red”).
Three possible intonation patterns and their meanings were explained by paraphrases:
"Blue, as everybody would have expected." → expected“Blue, isn't it strange?” → unexpected“Blue.” → neutral
Results – general tendencies
● Duration manipulation was used, but hardly systematically with respect to the functional contrast.
● Pitch manipulation was used to distinguish between all three functional categories by most of the subjects.
● Only “unexpected” was assigned more or less the same
prosodic expression by all subjects.
● With some exceptions, only falling pitch patterns were created.
Results – pitch timing
Measurements of peak timing for the falling contours by 5 subjects:→ temporal distance vowel onset – F0 maximum
[ms]
Results – pitch height
Measurements of peak height for the falling contours by 5 subjects:
[Hz]
Example: manipulations for test word blue by one subject
neutral
expected
unexpected
Discussion (1/2)
A preliminary result:
In South Swedish Accent 1 utterances, (un)expected information...
... is not signalled through durational means
... is not signalled through a pitch peak timing contrast
... but more likely through differences in pitch height.
→ Support for H1 (no later timing for 'unexpected')
BUT: pitch fall not convincingly early → no clear case of contrast preservation
→ no support for H2, only partial support for H1
Discussion (2/2)
Refinement of the method● Functional contrasts must be explained more carefully
➔ Concept 'neutral' is problematic➔ Situational setting: who says what (and why and where...) ?
● Other technical solutions?➔ Scroll bars instead of parameter curves?
Open questions / future research● Investigate peak height – unexpected information more systematically
● How unimportant is timing? → methodological artefact?
● Attempt to elicit the pragmatic contrasts
● What happens in Accent 2 words?
● Investigate spontaneous speech data (“from signal to function”)
● What would German subjects do (with German materials)?
Thank You!
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