Caterina Petrone

Acoustic and respiratory evidence for utterance planning in German

Abstract This study investigates prosodic planning in a reading task in German. We analyse how the utterance length and syntactic complexity of an upcoming sentence affect two acoustic parameters (pause duration and the initial fundamental frequency peak) and two respiratory parameters (inhalation depth and inhalation duration). Two experiments were carried out. In the first experiment, data for twelve native speakers of German were recorded. They read sentences varying in length (short, long) and syntactic complexity (simple, complex). Data were analysed on the basis of the four phonetic parameters. Pause duration, inhalation depth and inhalation duration showed significant differences with respect to sentence length, but not to syntactic complexity. The initial f0 peak was not influenced by variations in length or syntactic complexity. In the second experiment it was hypothesized that the initial f0 peak is only sensitive to length manipulations of the first constituent. Twenty speakers were recorded reading utterances varying in the length of the first (short, medium, long) and last syntactic constituent (short, long). Results for the initial f0 peak confirmed our hypothesis. It is concluded that the breathing parameters and pause duration are global parameters for planning of the upcoming sentence whereas the height of the fundamental frequency peak is a more local measure sensitive to the length of the first constituent.

On the intonation of German intonation questions: the role of the prenuclear region.

German questions and statements are distinguished not only by lexical and syntactic but also by intonational means. This study revisits, for Northern Standard German, how questions are signalled intonationally in utterances that have neither lexical nor syntactic cues. Starting from natural productions of such ‘intonation questions’, two perception experiments were run. Experiment I is based on a gating paradigm, which was applied to naturally produced questions and statements. Experiment II includes two indirect-identification tasks. Resynthesized stimuli were judged in relation to two context utterances, each of which was compatible with only one sentence mode interpretation. Results show that utterances with a finally falling nuclear pitch-accent contour can also trigger question perception. An utterance-final rise is not mandatory. Also, question and statement cues are not restricted to the intonational nucleus. Rather, listeners can refer to shape, slope, and alignment differences of the preceding prenuclear pitch accent to identify sentence mode. These findings are in line with studies suggesting that the utterance-final rise versus fall contrast is not directly related to sentence modality, but represents a separate attitudinal meaning dimension. Moreover, the findings support that both prenuclear and nuclear fundamental frequency (F0) patterns must be taken into account in the analysis of tune meaning.

Assessing respiratory contributions to f0 declination in German across varying speech tasks and respiratory demands

Many past studies have sought to determine the factors that affect f0 declination, and the physiological underpinnings of the phenomenon. This study assessed the relation between respiration and f0 declination by means of simultaneous acoustic and respiratory recordings from read and spontaneous speech from speakers of German. Within the respective Intonational Phrase unit, we analysed the effect of the number of syllables and voiceless obstruents. Both factors could influence the slope of either f0 declination or rib cage movement. If respiration and f0 declination are related physiologically, their relationship might also be modulated by either one or both factors. Our results show consistently for both speech tasks that the slope of the rib cage movement is not related with f0 declination when length and consonant content vary. Furthermore f0 slopes are generally shallower in spontaneous than in read speech. Finally, although a higher number of voiceless obstruents yielded a greater rib cage compression, it did not affect f0 declination. These results suggest that although f0 declination occurs in many languages, it might not have a purely physiological origin in breathing, but rather reflects cognitive processing which allows speakers to look ahead when planning their utterances.

Phonetic and phonological imitation of intonation in two varieties of Italian

The aim of this study was to test whether both phonetic and phonological representations of intonation can be rapidly modified when imitating utterances belonging to a different regional variety of the same language. Our main hypothesis was that tonal alignment, just as other phonetic features of speech, would be rapidly modified by Italian speakers when imitating pitch accents of a different (Southern) variety of Italian. In particular, we tested whether Bari Italian (BI) speakers would produce later peaks for their native rising L + H* (question pitch accent) in the process of imitating Neapolitan Italian (NI) rising L* + H accents. Also, we tested whether BI speakers are able to modify other phonetic properties (pitch level) as well as phonological characteristics (changes in tonal composition) of the same contour. In a follow-up study, we tested if the reverse was also true, i.e., whether NI speakers would produce earlier peaks within the L* + H accent in the process of imitating the L + H* of BI questions, despite the presence of a contrast between two rising accents in this variety. Our results show that phonetic detail of tonal alignment can be successfully modified by both BI and NI speakers when imitating a model speaker of the other variety. The hypothesis of a selective imitation process preventing alignment modifications in NI was hence not supported. Moreover the effect was significantly stronger for low frequency words. Participants were also able to imitate other phonetic cues, in that they modified global utterance pitch level. Concerning phonological convergence, speakers modified the tonal specification of the edge tones in order to resemble that of the other variety by either suppressing or increasing the presence of a final H%. Hence, our data show that intonation imitation leads to fast modification of both phonetic and phonological intonation representations including detail of tonal alignment and pitch scaling.

Brain response to prosodic boundary cues depends on boundary position

Prosodic information is crucial for spoken language comprehension and especially for syntactic parsing, because prosodic cues guide the hearers syntactic analysis. The time course and mechanisms of this interplay of prosody and syntax are not yet well-understood. In particular, there is an ongoing debate whether local prosodic cues are taken into account automatically or whether they are processed in relation to the global prosodic context in which they appear. The present study explores whether the perception of a prosodic boundary is affected by its position within an utterance. In an event-related potential (ERP) study we tested if the brain response evoked by the prosodic boundary differs when the boundary occurs early in a list of three names connected by conjunctions (i.e., after the first name) as compared to later in the utterance (i.e., after the second name). A closure positive shift (CPS)—marking the processing of a prosodic phrase boundary—was elicited for stimuli with a late boundary, but not for stimuli with an early boundary. This result is further evidence for an immediate integration of prosodic information into the parsing of an utterance. In addition, it shows that the processing of prosodic boundary cues depends on the previously processed information from the preceding prosodic context.

From Tones to Tunes: Effects of the f 0 Prenuclear Region in the Perception of Neapolitan Statements and Questions

Most research on tune meaning has focussed on the contribution of the nuclear configuration (composed of nuclear accent, phrase accent and boundary tone), while the meaning contribution of the prenuclear contour (i.e., the intonational region preceding the nuclear accent) is still understudied. In Neapolitan Italian, differences in early (L+H*) vs. late (L*+H) nuclear accent alignment are used to differentiate narrow focus statements and yes/no questions. Furthermore, a tone appears to be inserted at the right edge of the Accentual Phrase (AP) in the prenuclear contour, which is differently specified in questions (HAP) and in statements (LAP). In this paper, we test the hypothesis that such a difference in AP tonal specification would help Neapolitan listeners to recover the contrast between questions and statements early within the intonation phrase. Both an identification and a semantic differential task were run on gated stimuli, in which the nuclear accent information was omitted. Results show that the prenuclear contour carries enough information in order to distinguish the two intonation modalities and that AP scaling manipulation significantly affects listeners’ judgments. This challenges the idea that the nuclear configuration alone is relevant for the questions-statements distinction, thus implying that tune meaning is the result of the interaction between prenuclear and nuclear f 0 contours.

How pitch change and final lengthening cue boundary perception in German: converging evidence from ERPs and prosodic judgements

ABSTRACT This study examines the role of pitch and final lengthening in German intonation phrase boundary (IPB) perception. Since a prosody-related event-related potential (ERP) component termed Closure Positive Shift reflects the processing of major prosodic boundaries, we combined ERP and behavioural measures (i.e. a prosodic judgement task) to systematically test the impact of sole and combined cue occurrences on IPB perception. In two experiments we investigated whether adult listeners perceived an IPB in acoustically manipulated speech material that contained none, one, or two of the prosodic boundary cues. Both ERP and behavioural results suggest that pitch and final lengthening cues have to occur in combination to trigger IPB perception. Hence, the combination of behavioural and electrophysiological measures provides a comprehensive insight into prosodic boundary cue perception in German and leads to an argument in favour of interrelated cues from the frequency (i.e. pitch change) and the time (i.e. final lengthening) domain.

Relations among subglottal pressure, breathing, and acoustic parameters of sentence-level prominence in German

This study investigates whether acoustic correlates of prominence are related to actions of the respiratory system resulting in local changes of subglottal pressure (Psub). Simultaneous recordings were made of acoustics; intraoral pressure (Pio), as an estimate of Psub; and thoracic and abdominal volume changes. Ten German speakers read sentences containing a verb ending with /t/ followed by a noun starting with /t/. These /t#t/ sequences were typically realized as one /t:/ with a long intraoral pressure plateau. Sentence-level prominence was manipulated by shifting the position of contrastive focus within the sentences. The slope and peak values of Pio within the /t#t/ sequence were used to estimate differences in Psub across focus positions. Results show that prominence production is related to changes in the slope and maximum value of the pressure plateau. While pressure increases led to higher intensity, the increases did not relate to f0, hence, suggesting that local f0 changes primarily reflect laryngeal activity. Finally, strong individual differences were observed in the respiratory data. These findings confirm past reports of local Psub increases corresponding to sentence-level prominence. Speaker-specific activations of the respiratory system are interpreted in terms of motor equivalence, with laryngeal mechanisms also appearing to contribute to Psub changes.

Individual Differences in Speech Production and Perception

Inter-individual variation in speech is a topic of increasing interest both in human sciences and speech technology. It can yield important insights into biological, cognitive, communicative, and social aspects of language. Written by specialists in psycholinguistics, phonetics, speech development, speech perception and speech technology, this volume presents experimental and modeling studies that provide the reader with a deep understanding of interspeaker variability and its role in speech processing, speech development, and interspeaker interactions. It discusses how theoretical models take into account individual behavior, explains why interspeaker variability enriches speech communication, and summarizes the limitations of the use of speaker information in forensics.