Tonal Alignment in English Reply to Pierrehumbert and Steele 1989

소개

This study investigates whether tonal alignment in English is categorical or gradient. In the present study, the melody of speech basically shows a categorical function. Focused areas are realized with more increased duration, fundamental frequency, and intensity than non-focused areas. Also, significant differences can be found between neutral and uncertainty conditions. The latter exhibits a sharp rising F0 curve following the release [m] in millionaire. On the other hand, the neutral sentences have a continuous declining F0 contour after [m]. This seems to support the categorical differences between the conditions in each group. However, the distinctions are attributed to a different communicative function. More importantly, the distributions of the uncertainty conditions turn out to be broad, which implies that each speaker delivers a different tonal pattern.

목차

Abstract

1. Introduction
2. Pierrehumbert & Steele (1989)
3. Methodology
3.1. Stimuli
3.2. Subjects
3.3. Procedure
3.4. F0 extraction
3.5. F0 Measurements
3.6. Analyses and Results
4. Discussion
5. Conclusion

6. References

본문내용

Languages can be classified into two groups by intonation: head-prominence and edge-prominence [6]. The former includes languages such as English, German, and Dutch, in which intonation is marked by a pitch accent. The latter includes Korean, Japanese, Bengali, French, and Turkish, among others, in which intonation is realized by prosodic phrasing on the edges of a phrase by intonation. As mentioned, English is a head-prominence language. Thus, an English intonation is realized with a pitch accent which is marked by the diacritic * on the most prominent word [7].

참고자료

· [1] Beaver. D., and Clark. B., "Always and only: why not all focus-sensitive operators are alike", Natural Language Semantics 11, 323-362, 2003
· [2] Boersma, P., Praat, a system for doing phonetics by computer. Glot International 5:9/10: 341-345, 2001.
· [3] Chen, S.-w., Wang, B. and Xu, Y, “Closely related languages, different ways of realizing focus”, Proceedings of Interspeech 2009, Brighton, UK, 1007-1010, 2009.
· [4] Grice, M., and Baumann, S., “An introduction to intonation – functions and models”, In Jürgen Trouvain and Ulrike Gut eds., Non-native prosody, 25-52. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2007.
· [5] Gussenhoven, C., "Discretness and gradience in intonational contrasts", Language and Speech, 42, 283-305, 1999.
· [6] Jun, Sun-Ah, “Focus in English and Korean”, A special lecture at the Annual Conference of Korean Society of Language and Information (KSLI), Kangwon National University, Chuncheon, Korea, 2006.
· [7] Pierrehumbert, J. “The phonology and phonetics of English intonation”, Ph.D. D