Session Prosody III:Prosody III: Alignment and Articulation
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| Prosody III-1 |
ON THE ARTICULATORY BASES OF PROMINENCE IN ITALIAN
Cinzia Avesani, Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies- CNR Mario Vayra, University of Bologna Claudio Zmarich, Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies- CNR Paper File |
| This study reports the first results of a research aimed to investigate how segmental variation is conditioned by prosody in Italian, by examining the acoustic and articulatory properties of syllables that are prominent at different levels of the prosodic hierarchy. We examined lip movement kinematics of unstressed, stressed and nuclearly accented syllables in order to understand the kinematic characteristics of accent-induced articulatory strenghthening. The kinematic results are then interpreted within a Task Dynamics model to evaluate how prosodically-driven variation can be accounted for by a particular dynamical parameter setting in a mass-spring gestural model. | |
| Prosody III-2 |
Stress and boundary effects on anticipatory and preservatory nasal airflow
Christopher S. Doty, University of Oregon Melissa A. Redford, University of Oregon Paper File |
| The present study examined the effects of boundary strength and stress on nasal coarticulation with neighboring segments. Acoustic and nasal airflow data were recorded from four speakers as they produced intervocalic fricative-nasal and nasal-fricative sequences that spanned a word-internal boundary or a word boundary under two different stress conditions. Although neither stress nor boundary affected preservatory nasal airflow, tautosyllabic stress was associated with increased anticipatory nasal airflow within a word, but not at the edge of a word where coarticulation decreased or stayed the same. The interaction between boundary strength and stress was attributed to condition-dependent differences in the relative durations of individual segments. Overall, the study suggests that stress-induced lengthening of a velar gesture results in the leftward spread of nasality if adjacent segments are not also substantially lengthened by prosodic factors. | |
| Prosody III-3 |
COORDINATION PATTERNS BETWEEN PITCH MOVEMENTS AND ORAL GESTURES IN CATALAN
Pilar Prieto, ICREA-Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Doris Mücke, IfL Phonetik-University of Cologne Johannes Becker, IfL Phonetik-University of Cologne Martine Grice, IfL Phonetik-University of Cologne Paper File |
| In this paper, we investigate the coordination rela-tions between F0 turning points in bitonal pitch accents and landmarks of dynamically defined ar-ticulatory gestures in Catalan, using kinematic and acoustic data on three pitch accent types. Electro-magnetic articulography data (EMMA) reveals that the end of pitch movements for two rising and one falling accent are tightly synchronized with the peak velocity of the oral closing gestures (such as tongue tip raising) during the production of vowel-consonant sequences. | |
| Prosody III-4 |
Distribution and alignment of f0 contours in Tamil
Elinor Keane, Oxford University Phonetics Laboratory Paper File |
| Previous work on Tamil intonation suggests that each word in a phrase except the final verb typically bears a fall-rise-fall f0 contour. The distribution of these contours was investigated in more detail by recording eighteen speakers reading sentences containing nouns of varying length in phrase-medial and phrase-final positions. This established that phrase-final nouns can bear fall-rise-fall contours but are not required to do so, and revealed the possibility of longer words bearing a double fall-rise-fall pattern. The alignment of the f0 turning-points was measured to investigate whether the peak is better characterized phonologically as the trailing tone of an L*H accent or a boundary tone. The balance of evidence pointed to the high tone being associated with the boundary of a low-level constituent, maximally the prosodic word. | |
| Prosody III-5 |
Phrase Boundaries and Peak Alignment: An Acoustic and Articulatory Study
Doris Mücke, IfL Phonetik, University of Cologne Anne Hermes, IfL Phonetik, University of Cologne Paper File |
| The present study investigates the effect of an upcoming phrase boundary on peak alignment in rising pitch accents in a variety of German (Vienna). We measured the synchronization of F0 peaks with acoustic segments and articulatory movements. As expected, the closer the tone bearing unit is to the phrase boundary, the earlier the F0 peak is aligned. Although this alignment is not systematic in relation to syllable or segment boundaries, it is in relation to articulatory movements. Specifically, the F0 peak is aligned with the oral closing gesture. Without time pressure, the F0 peak was placed at the target of the closing gesture and with time pressure before the target. The differences in the articulatory alignment patterns were not discrete but gradient. They correspond to articulatory adjustments at the phrase boundary (final lengthening of the oral gesture). | |