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Prosody
prosody = suprasegmentals
• occur simultaneously with Vs & Cs • extend over syllables, words, larger units
Prosody
in English:
lexical stressrhythm
intonation
in other languages:
lexical tone…
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Syllables
Native speakers share some intuitions about syllables
esp. counting syllables
bug 1water 2telephone 3elevation 4university 5
BUT:
what about fire, mild, mirror (1 or 2?)
Syllables
no satisfactory phonetic definition of a syllable
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Syllables
one proposal = sonority hierarchy
syllable consists of a sonority peak at its nucleus
starting from the left, the syllable “rises” in sonority; to the right, it falls
“SonorityHierarchy”
vowels (mostopen;greatestsonority)
approximants
nasals
fricatives
plosives (leastopen;leastsonority)
crustpeak
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Segment Relative Ampl. Segment Relative Ampl.
ɑ 26 n 15
ʌ 26 dʒ 13
æ 25 ʒ 13
ʊ 24 z 12
e 23 s 12
ɪ 22 t 11
u 22 g 11
i 22 k 11
w 21 v 10
ɹ 20 ð 10
j 20 b 8
l 20 d 8
ʃ 19 p 7
ŋ 18 f 7
m 17 θ 0
tʃ 16
“SonorityHierarchy”
manyviolationsinEnglishandcross-linguistically
spɹsplspjskɹsklskwskjstɹstj
sonorityadvocatesarguethatthesecanbe“handled”throughapplicationoftheoreticalprinciplescriticsarguethatthesonorityhierarchyisnotwell-motivatedtobeginwith
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“SonorityHierarchy”:critics
Ohala (1992,CLS)sonority:notempiricallydefinedsyllable:notempiricallydefined
“sonority”isnotanexplanation;it’sjustadescription(andnotaverygoodoneatthat!)
Reetz &Jongman (alsoskeptical)
bestunderstoodasadescriptionofabroadtendency
Syllables
no satisfactory phonetic definition of a syllable
ALSO:
no clear phonetic basis for determining syllable boundaries
WHY?
syllable boundaries do not appear in waveforms, spectrograms or other displays
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Syllables
bacon
/ˡbeɪ.kən/ or /ˡbeɪk.ən/?
How do we know which is right?
Syllables
athlete
/ˡæ.θlit/ or /ˡæθ.lit/?
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Syllables
bacon
/ˡbeɪ.kən/ or /ˡbeɪk.ən/?
Might propose “principles” for syllable division
e.g., “Maximum onset principle:”
==> assign Cs to onsets whenever possible
/k/ is the “onset” of the second syllable
Syllables
athlete
/ˡæ.θlit/ or /ˡæθ.lit/?
perhapsthisone,becausenowordsstartwith/θl/
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Syllables
But how do we know that our principles are right?(and what do we mean by “right”?)
Syllables
But how do we know that our principles are right?
Our best bet:
Empirical evidencepsycholinguistic experiments that test people’s intuitions
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Syllables
At best, evidence suggests certain tendencies about syllable structures in particular languages
HOWEVER, two speakers of the same language may still have different perceptions
Syllables
syllable = best understood as an intuitive notion that as yet “eludes scientific definition”
it remains unclear what (if any) aspects of syllables are “universal”
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Hierarchical structure of syllables
One view is that syllables have hierarchical components
nucleus, onset, coda, rime
Hierarchicalstructureofsyllables
nucleus=mostbasiccomponent,generallyaVotherpartsare“optional”
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Hierarchicalstructureofsyllables inEnglish
Hierarchicalstructureofsyllables
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English: onset-rime structure
onset
rime: nucleus + coda
Korean: body-coda structure
body: onset+nucleus
coda
(Derwing, Yoon, & Cho, 1993)
English prosody
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Stress in English
Stress refers to the prominence of particular syllables.
primary: [ˈɹɛ.kɚd] [ɹə.ˈkʰɔɹd]
secondary: [ˈfo.ɾə.ˌgɹæf]
tertiary: status is very doubtful
unstressed: [ɹə] in [ɹə.ˈkʰɔɹd]
Stress in English
trochee (trochaic pattern): primary + unstressed, e.g., ‘kitten,’ ‘water’
iamb (iambic pattern): unstressed + primary, e.g., ‘today,’ ‘adore’
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Acoustic correlates of stress in English
Property In [+stress]
F0 typically higher
duration typically longer
intensity typically higher
formant frequencies typically less “neutral”
NB:Notallcorrelatesarenecessarilypresentina[+stress]syllable.
Intensitycontour
Pitchcontour
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English unstressed vowels
typically reduced to /ə/ or /ɪ/
∴ formant frequencies are more /ə/-like
Perceptual research (English synthetic speech)
F0 and duration are more potent cues to stress than is intensity.
(not true in many other languages)
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Rhythm in English
What are the basic rhythmic units?
syllables?
Not likely for English, since syllables vary greatly in “weight”
The metrical foot?
defined as a stressed syllable TOGETHER WITH all the unstressed syllables after it
cat 1 footteacher 1 footanimal 1 footescalator 2 feet (1 primary stress; 1 secondary stress)
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Rhythm
English: stresses and unstresses tend to alternate:
The cows ate the grass. (content units.)
ə ə ə ɪ əThe cows have been eating the grass.
aʊ i æ
Rhythm
Different languages sound rhythmically different
e.g., English (morse code) vs French (machine-gun)
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Rhythmic classification of languages (Pike, 1945):
PROPOSAL: Isochrony
stress-timed (e.g., English, Czech)
• stressed syllables alternate with unstressed syllables• feet are isochronous, regardless of the number of syllables
isochrony = equal time
Rhythmic classification of languages (Pike, 1945)
stress-timed (e.g., English, Czech)
• stressed syllables alternate with unstressed syllables• feet are isochronous, regardless of the number of syllables
syllable-timed (e.g., French, Spanish)• syllables are isochronous
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Rhythmic classification of languages (Pike, 1945)
These conceptions of rhythm were accepted for a very long time because languages of these two categories clearly sound rhythmically different.
Q: BUT what does the research show?
What does the research show?
Approach:
measure durations of feet and syllables from waveforms in search of isochrony.
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What does the research show?
studies of stress-timed languages do not support the existence of isochrony of feet
studies of syllable-timed languages do not indicate true isochrony of syllables
So why do these two language categories sound different?
So why to these two language categories sound different?
1. In stress-timed languages ==> greater duration difference between stressed and unstressed syllables
2. Stress and syllable-timed languages, there are differences in
%V (% vocalic intervals)ΔC (variability in consonant intervals)
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“stress-timed”
“syllable-timed”
?
Rhythmic classification of languages
stress-timed (e.g., English, Czech)syllable-timed (e.g., French, Spanish)
mora-timed (Japanese)
mora (pl. morae): in Japanese a CV, a coda consonant, or the second half of a long vowel
te = hand 1 moraten = point 2 moraekii = key 2 morae
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Rhythmic classification of languages
stress-timed (e.g., English, Czech)syllable-timed (e.g., French, Spanish)mora-timed (Japanese)
Concl:
these categories seem to have some validity, but not because of isochrony
Length
segmental durations:
V and C durations are phonemic in some languages
English vowel duration DOES vary, and
Speakers can perceive differences greater than 1 JND (just noticeable difference)
1 JND for duration ≈ 25 ms
(Note: there are also JNDs for pitch)
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Length
phrase final lengthening:
a tendency in English for syllables to be longer at the end of phrases than in other positions
Length
speaking rate affects segment and syllable durations
length is perceived in relative rather than absolute terms
‘long’ means ‘comparatively long’
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How should we measure speaking tempo?
Tempo = an indication of fluency.
Should we use:
𝑻𝒆𝒎𝒑𝒐 = 𝒏𝒖𝒎𝒃𝒆𝒓𝒐𝒇𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒅𝒔𝒖𝒕𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒆𝒅
𝒕𝒐𝒕𝒂𝒍𝒔𝒑𝒆𝒂𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒆
gives words/s or wps.
è Unsatisfactory because English words vary tremendously in length.
Speaking rate (SR)
# of syllables divided by total time = syll/s
𝑆𝑅 =#𝑠𝑦𝑙𝑙𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒
This is much more useful, but…
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Speaking rate
# of syllables divided by total time = syll/s
can be misleading because natural speech includes pauses
unfilled pause = silencefilled pause = um, er, eh,…
𝑆𝑅 =#𝑠𝑦𝑙𝑙𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒
Articulation rate (AR)
exclude pauses; divide # syllables by total non-pause time
𝐴𝑅 =#𝑠𝑦𝑙𝑙𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒𝑠
𝑆𝑝𝑒𝑎𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑇𝑖𝑚𝑒 − 𝑃𝑎𝑢𝑠𝑒𝑇𝐼𝑀𝐸
Typically AR > than SR, because pausing is not factored into AR.AR gives a better estimate of how quickly the phones are produced.
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Speaking rate variations have non-linear effects on segments
Generally: faster speech ≘ shorter segments
BUT not all segments are affected equally:
Vowels – very compressible (show large rate effects)
Fricatives, aspiration – somewhat compressible
Stop bursts – not compressible at all
Intonation: variation in F0 over phrases, longer utterances
Linguistic functions
conveys sentence structure (e.g. phrase boundaries)signals different utterance types (declarative vs interrogative)conveys contrastive meanings (emphasis on particular words)
Paralinguistic functions
may convey speaker attitude (excited, bored...)
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