Representing Intonational Variation

7/11/2013
14
The British School
• Tone sequence model and pitch movement analysis (e.g. falling vs. rising intonation) • Auditory model: teaching English as a second language – O’Connor and Arnold 1972:
• Advantages
– Good at modeling declination in intonation languages
– Successful in speech synthesis for languages like Japanese (little variation in accent type, e.g.) – Capture prosodic structure in languages which have both tone and intonation (e.g. Mandarin) • Disadvantages – All contours must be modeled with an accent and a phrase component – Many SAE contours cannot be captured easily
7/11/2013
2
Schemes for Representing Intonational Variation
• An early proposal: Joshua Steele • Language Learning Approaches – / IS it INteresting / – / d’you feel ANGry? / – / WHAT’S the PROBlem? / (McCarthy, 1991:106) • How can we capture all and only the meaningful intonational variation for a given language unambiguously?
7/11/2013 6
Intonation Models
• Linear or Tone sequence models
– British school (Kingdon ’58, O’Connor & Arnold ’73, Cruttenden ’97): based on auditory analysis – American School (Pierrehumbert ’80, ToBI): mainly acoustic analysis
7/11/2013
11
Tone sequence models
• General assumption: intonation is generated from sequences of (possibly) categorically different and phonologically distinctive accents • Two types of models within the group of tone sequence models: Type 1: Intonation made up of sequences of pitch movements Type 2: Intonation made up of sequences of pitch levels or targets
7/11/2013 7
Superpositional models
• Pitch pattern of intonation modeled with two components: phrase component and accent component. • Phrase has basic shape, and pitch movements for individual accents are superimposed over basic shape:
7/11/2013 12
Two types of tone-sequence model
Type 1: based on pitch movements
tar
g
et
Type 2: based on pitch levels
The British School The Dutch School
H t a rg
e tL
The American School
7/11/2013 13
Tone Sequence Models
• Overall shape of intonation phrase is not component of models – Model is a succession of independent accent and boundary tone choices from an intonation lexicon – Do not model phrase-level phenomena (e.g. declination, pitch range, nuclear accent)
• Earliest textbook for English instruction that tells user which contour appropriate in which context • No empirical evidence
• British school analyses applied to English, German, Dutch, French, …
7/11/2013 10
– Intonation contours cannot be modeled as sequences of prosodic events – No account of different accent types, or variations in phrase endings – No notation system which allows users to share observations from large speech corpora or to compare contours – A method primarily for synthesis, analysis of speech production
– Dutch school (‘t Hart, Collier and Cohen 1990): perceptual data • Superpositional models (Fujisaki 1983, Möbius et al. 1993): acoustic/physiological
7/11/2013 5
Intonation models
• Basic division into linear and superpositional models – Linear models: intonation involves a succession of individual choices from an intonation lexicon – Superpositional models: the intonation of an utterance involves a combination of local and utterance-sized components • Speakers may combine aspects of linear and superpositional models in the production of intonation
7/11/2013 3
Intonation Models
• No commonly agreed upon model for one language, let alone all • Researchers work in different traditions and focus on different aspects of intonation • Different models may arise from different types of data – Auditory – Acoustic – Perceptual –…
Lily and Rosa thought this was divine. Prince William was gorgeous and he was looking for a bride. They dreamed of wedding bells.
7/11/2013 9
Superpositional models
plus
=
7/11/2013
Apples, oranges and tomatoesg declination
• Declination: downtrend in f0 over the course of an utterance • Best seen as statistical abstraction: if one takes f0 measurements from enough utterances, over time, a downtrend in f0 will emerge
7/11/2013 15
Concepts in the British School
• Basic unit of intonational description: intonation phrase (tone unit) – Delimited by pauses, phrase-final lengthening, pitch movement • Syllables within a tone unit can be stressed or accented