Towards a comprehensive investigation of factors relevant to peak alignment using a unit selection corpus (original) (raw)
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Effects of syllable structure and nuclear pitch accents on peak alignment: A corpus-based analysis
This paper describes the use of a unit selection corpus in carrying out an investigation of factors influencing specific aspects of the phonetic realization of tonal categories, concentrating on the alignment of peaks in H*L pitch accents in German. Three major linguistic parameters potentially influencing peak alignment are investigated. Two of them (syllable structure, nuclear pitch accents) are established influences
The influence of vowel quality features on peak alignment
2007
This study continues an approach that uses a unit selection corpus in order to investigate aspects of the phonetic realization of tonal categories. The focus lies on the peak position of German H*L pitch accents, specifically on the question of whether it is influenced by vowel quality. It is confirmed that vowel backness does not affect peak alignment at all. The distinction between tense and lax vowels initially promises to be relevant, as the H*L peaks seemingly occur significantly earlier in lax vowels. The effect is however demonstrated to be caused by the far greater number of lax vowels in the closed syllables found in the corpus. Finally, the feature of vowel height is revealed to be a significant factor (peaks are aligned latest in high vowels, earliest in low vowels). Various parameters (e.g., syllable structure, position in the phrase) are examined for interactions, but cannot account for the effect. While vowel height correlates with vowel duration, vowel duration itself...
Comparative Investigation of Peak Alignment in Polish and German Unit Selection Corpora
2000
This paper presents a comparative study on the temporal alignment of pitch peaks of H*L accents in Polish and German. Speech material used in the study came from the unit selection synthesis corpora of the Polish voice module of the BOSS system and the IMS German Festival TTS system. The major factors investigated were concerned with the influence of syllable
Pitch accent realization in German
ling.uni-potsdam.de
As far as the phonetic realization of pitch accents is concerned, several features, for example the horizontal alignment or vertical scaling of tones, were investigated in the past. Studies on the horizontal alignment of tonal targets provide evidence for a relatively stable anchoring ...
Pitch accent scaling on given, new and focused constituents in German
Journal of Phonetics, 2008
The influence of information structure on tonal scaling in German is examined experimentally. Eighteen speakers uttered a total of 2277 sentences of the same syntactic structure, but with a varying number of constituents, word order and focus-given structure. The quantified results for German support findings for other Germanic languages that the scaling of high tones, and thus the entire melodic pattern, is influenced by information structure. Narrow focus raised the high tones of pitch accents, while givenness lowered them in prenuclear position and canceled them out postnuclearly. The effects of focus and givenness are calculated against all-new sentences as a baseline, which we expected to be characterized by downstep, a significantly lower scaling of high tones as compared to declination. The results further show that information structure alone cannot account for all variations. We therefore assume that dissimilatory tonal effects play a crucial role in the tonal scaling of German. The effects consist of final f0 drop, a steep fall from a raised high tone to the bottom line of the speaker, H-raising before a low tone, and H-lowering before a raised high tone. No correlation between word order and tone scaling could be established. r
This paper is concerned with the relationships between ‘early’ pitch accents in German and with whether downstep in German is phonological or phonetic. At the core of our analysis is an investigation into the differences between two kinds of pitch accents in which the pitch peak precedes the accented vowel: these are H+!H* and H+L* which are claimed to be phonologically contrastive in German. We made use of two experimental procedures: (1) a production experiment in which speakers were asked to imitate synthetically manipulated sentences and (2) a semantic differential experiment in which listeners rated the perceived meaning of those sentences on eight semantic scales. Although both the imitation and perception experiment provided evidence for a distinction between an early and a later (H*) peak accent, the results pointed neither to a three-way distinction, nor to a categorical distinction between H+!H* and H+L*. Finally, we present some results from an analysis of both English and German corpora which suggest that the difference between these two peaks may be phonetic and attributable to the number of syllables following the nuclear accent in the tail. Based on these results and from theoretical considerations, we argue that H+!H* is an inappropriate pitch accent category in the inventory of paradigmatic phonological intonational contrasts of standard German.
Sources of variation in tonal alignment: Evidence from acoustic and kinematic data
Journal of Phonetics, 2009
This study is concerned with the alignment of f0 peaks in rising LH pitch accents in German, both in relation to acoustically defined segments, referred to as segmental anchors, as well as to dynamically defined speech gestures, referred to as articulatory anchors. The effects investigated were the effects of syllable structure (test words " CV:CV and " CVCV, where the test syllable is open or closed, respectively), dialectal background (the varieties of German spoken in Düsseldorf and Vienna), and accent status in the intonational hierarchy (prenuclear and nuclear accents).