Phonetic cues and phonological constraints in prosodic unit definition: evidence for the intermediate phrase in French (original) (raw)
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Durational cues and prosodic phrasing in French: evidence for the intermediate phrase
2010
Studies addressing prosodic constituency in French generally agree on two levels of phrasing (accentual phrase, AP, and intonation phrase, IP), while the existence of an intermediate level of phrasing (intermediate phrase, ip) is still controversial. In this study we examine durational cues in a read speech corpus at normal and fast rates in which the target syllable was either adjacent to a prosodic boundary or word-internal. Additional evidence for the existence of an intermediate level of phrasing between the AP and the IP was found: the vicinity to an ip-boundary is signaled by durational cues that are stronger than the ones associated to an AP-boundary, yet this lengthening is weaker than the one found in the vicinity of an IP boundary.
Journal of Phonetics, 2010
We conducted a production experiment with 1600 potentially ambiguous utterances distinguished by word boundary location in Catalan and Spanish (e.g., Cat. mirà batalles ‘(s)he looked at battles’ vs. mirava talles ‘I/(s)he used to look at carvings’; Span. da balazos ‘(s)he fires shots’ vs. daba lazos ‘I/(s)he gave ribbons’; stressed syllables are underlined). Results revealed strong effects of within-word position on H location. Peaks tended to be timed earlier with respect to the end of the syllable when their associated syllables occurred later in the word than when they occurred earlier in the word. These results confirmed previous findings for other languages (Silverman & Pierrehumbert, 1990 for English; Arvaniti, Ladd, & Mennen, 1998 for Greek; and Ishihara, 2006 for Japanese; and Godjevac, 2000 for Serbo-Croatian) and for Spanish and Catalan (Prieto, van Santen, & Hirschberg, 1995 for Spanish; de la Mota, 2005; Simonet, 2006, Simonet & Torreira, 2005 for Catalan). A set of perception experiments suggested that tonal alignment patterns influence listeners’ judgments of word boundary location both in Catalan and in Spanish. Listeners were able to employ fine allophonic details of H tonal alignment due to within-word position to identify lexical items that are ambiguous for word-boundary position. The data is consistent with the view that prosodic structure plays an essential part in determining the temporal coordination of f0 contours with segmental material.▶Position of the accented syllable in the word has significant effects on f0 peak location. ▶Perception results show that f0 peak placement can be a subtle cue to word boundary identification. ▶Prosodic structure plays a role in the timing coordination of f0 contours with segmental material.
Processing Prosodic Boundaries in Natural and Filtered Speech
Speech Prosody 2014, 2014
Studies on accentual tonal alignment of intonation languages suggest that L in rising (LH) pre-nuclear accents anchors with a specific point in the segmental string, while the timing of H varies. This study investigates if lexical accents, too, exhibit a constant alignment by testing the South Swedish word Accent II. When under the strain of tempo variability the L-target was found not to be anchored with syllable onset. The results were not fully conclusive regarding H, but no clear evidence was found against anchoring of H, which could mean that H is an important phonological event in Accent II, while L is not.
The prediction of prosodic timing: Rules for final syllable lengthening in French
1993
Timing is an essential part of prosody, since it contributes to the semantic and syntactic modulations of speech conveyed by accent and intonation. Theoretical and empirical considerations suggest that temporal organization takes two main forms. First, it is a necessary corollary of accent placement and intonational modification. Second, it manifests itself in prolongations, pauses and hesitations related to sentence structure. A set of rules for the second set of temporal modulations is presented. In contrast to previous work, such rules depend only minimally on syntactic structures and can be formulated nearly entirely in simple phonological terms.
Variation in Prosodic Boundary Strength: a study on dislocated XPs in French
Delais-Roussarie, Elisabeth & Ingo Feldhausen. „Variation in Prosodic Boundary Strength in French“. Speech Prosody 7, Dublin (Ireland), 1052-1056., 2014
"Three independently motivated types of information are usually assumed to influence prosodic boundary placement and to play a role in their relative strength: the morphosyntactic structure, the information structure and the metrical complexity. The phonetic realization associated with the different boundary types (in particular IP and ip) is also assumed to vary. Based on data of clitic left-dislocations in French, we argue here that differences in the relative strength of the prosodic boundary occurring at the end of the dislocated XP (i.e. an intermediate (ip) or an intonational phrase (IP) boundary) cannot be derived in a straightforward manner from these three types of information. In a production experiment, where the syntactic and information structure were controlled, while the metrical complexity was varied, the analysis of the data achieved with a semi-automatic tool, ANALOR, showed that the strength of the boundary occurring at the right edge of the dislocated object NP displayed a high degree of variability. In addition, the results indicate a lack of correlation between metrical complexity and boundary strength. The results lead us to argue that a sort of phonological neutralization occurs in certain textual contexts. This neutralization does not allow for distinguishing between intermediate and intonational phrase boundaries in all cases."
The Comparison of Prosodic Boundary Features with Encliticized and Procliticized Function Words
In spontaneous speech, unlike read speech, prosodic phrasing doesn't match with syntactic structure often. Previous research confirms that this phenomenon usually occurs at intermediate phrase boundaries where function words are encliticized or procliticized. The research aims at observing prosodic boundary feature change as intermediate boundary positions were relocated. Ten pairs of the sentences selected from the audio book 3 0 0 E Hoot 3 0 0 F (spontaneous speech) and high school English textbook (read speech) were extracted and the function words were encliticized to proceeding host words or procliticized to succeeding host words. After measuring the length of the pauses, final syllables, and the changes of fundamental frequencies using Pratt, differences among prosodic boundary features were analysed. The results showed that the pause lengths at intermediate phrase boundaries shortened, final syllable length increased and high phrase accents prevailed over low phrase accents. Final syllable lengthening and phrase accents occurred at the early phases of boundary positions. In conclusion, prosodic phrasing exposes the overall sentence structure at the early stages of utterance, and listeners can anticipate the upcoming development of utterances. Considering that prosodic phrasing is essential for language learning, learners of English as a second language should practice prosodic phrasing rather than syntactic phrasing.
Crosslinguistic Segmental Durations and Prosodic Typology
2002
The present study is an experimental investigation of the effects of syllable position, stress, focus and tempo on segmental durations in American English, British English, Greek and Swedish. Nonsense disyllabic CVCV words were produced in a carrier sentence under different conditions of stress, focus and tempo. The results indicate that stress and tempo have a major effect on both consonant and vowel across all four languages, whereas the effects of syllable position and focus are hardly evident. Significant interactions were mostly found between syllable position and stress for the vowel.