João Antônio de Moraes

Illocution, attitudes and prosody: A multimodal analysis

Through the analysis of an audio-visual corpus of Brazilian Portuguese prosodic attitudes, this paper describes the effect of attitude category on the prosodic realization of sentences. Attitudes that directly address the propositional content of utterances, which in fact correspond to new illocutions, were found to induce more changes in the acoustic signal than do those used to manage the social relationship between speaker and addressee. This difference is also reflected in perception, with the social attitudes mostly perceived through visual cues, while the propositional ones tend to be based on audio cues.

Você está pedindo ou perguntando? Uma análise entonacional de pedidos e perguntas no português do Brasil

In this paper the intonation contours of yes/no questions and requestsin Brazilian Portuguese are compared. Speech synthesis was used toevaluate the relevance of the F0 configuration of nuclear andprenuclear pitch accents in the distinction between these twointonational patterns. Thirty-one resynthesized melodic versions ofthe sentence “Na festa destranca?” (At the party do you unlock it?/At the party would you please unlock it?) – which is ambiguous inPortuguese in its interpretation as a question or as a request – havebeen created. These versions, placed in four auditory tests, havebeen judged by twenty listeners who evaluated the effects of themodifications in the original sentence, in favor of its interpretationeither as a question or as a request. The results of the perceptiontests show that the opposition between the two melodic contours isdue to the direction of the F0 curve in the nuclear pitch accent,rising in the yes/no question and falling in the request. A phonologicalrepresentation of these patterns, based on distinct temporal alignmentsof the F0 peak in the final stressed syllables, is proposed.

Social affective variations in Brazilian Portuguese: a perceptual and acoustic analysis

Resumo: Este trabalho descreve e analisa um corpus de 17 atitudes prosodicas produzido por 21 falantes do portugues do Brasil (PB). A interpretacao dada a essas atitudes baseia-se em um experimento de escolha livre (free-labelling) do qual participaram 22 ouvintes brasileiros. O agrupamento das diferentes expressoes obtidas no experimento e relacionado aos parâmetros acusticos da prosodia (F0 , intensidade, duracao), e sua interpretacao e feita com base na literatura sobre a manifestacao da expressividade na fala e nas teorias do uso simbolico da voz em interacoes (codigo da frequencia, de Ohala, e codigo do esforco, de Gussenhoven). Os resultados mostram que as principais dimensoes de sentido identificadas pelos ouvintes podem ser reagrupadas em tres grandes categorias: valencia positiva, expressoes assertivas e expressoesxa0dubitativas, dimensoes que se correlacionam com as medidas acusticas. Palavras-chave: prosodia; free-labelling; dimensoes de sentido; medidas acusticas. Abstract: This work presents a description and an analysis of an attitudinal corpus recorded in Brazilian Portuguese by 21 speakers. The interpretation of their performances across 17 situations, by L1 speakers of Brazilian Portuguese, is studied thanks to a free-labelling experiment. The grouping of expressions is then related to acoustic parameters of prosody. The interpretation of these descriptions is done in the light of literature on expression of affect in voice, and theories of symbolic use of voice in spoken interactions (Ohala’s Frequency Code, and Gussenhoven’s Effort Code). Results show that the main dimensions of meaning retrieved by the listeners may be summarized as: positive valence, assertive and dubitative expressions. These dimensions do correlate with the acoustical measures. Keywords: prosody; free-labelling; dimensions of meaning; acoustic measures.

Personality Judgments Based on Speaker’s Social Affective Expressions

This paper describes some of the acoustic characteristics that influence peoples’ judgments about others. The database used was the multilingual corpus recorded with speakers in communicative dialogue contexts (e.g., Rilliard et al. 2013). The acoustic measurements were F0, intensity, HNR, H1-H2, and formant frequencies (F1, F2, and F3). The personality assessment was based on that proposed by Costa and McCrae (1992). A Multiple Factor Analysis (MFA) related the acoustic measures, the performance scores for each attitude, and the number of high, high-medium, low-medium and low ratings in the 5 personality traits, for audio-only and for audio-visual modalities. The results show that the most expressive speakers, those who produced the widest range in acoustic changes, were perceived as more EXTROVERTED and CONSCIENTIOUS. Speakers with high noise levels in the voice were judged with low AGREEABLENESS, and produced the best expressions involving an imposition on the interlocutor. Speakers judged as having high NEUROTICISM and low OPENNESS were perceived as the best performers for expressions with strong social constraints.