Word-boundary effects in f0 timing laboratory and spontaneous speech

1. Word-boundary effects in f0 timinglaboratory and spontaneous speech Miquel Simonet & Francisco Torreira University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 2nd Sp-ToBI Workshop, Barcelona 2005

2. Spanish pre-nuclear rising accents (Some background) Spanish intonation has attracted a great deal of attention in recent years, ever since the groundbreaking work of Navarro Tomás (1918, 1944). Navarro Tomás (1944) makes two important observations about the intonation patterns of broad focus declaratives that have been rediscovered in recent times: • The f0rises throughout the stressed syllable • The f0 often reaches its highest point in the post-tonic syllable (This has been shown in greater phonetic detail recently)

3. Spanish pre-nuclear rising accents • Phonetic work on Mexican Spanish by Prieto and colleagues (Prieto 1998, Prieto and Shih 1995, Prieto et al. 1995, 1996) analyzed rising pitch-accents as H* tones with a feature of peak displacement. • Sosa (1995, 1999) and Face (1999, 2002) analyzed Spanish pre-nuclear accents as L*H based on the following reasons: • L is consistently anchored to the stressed syllable onset • H is displaced outside the bounds of the stressed syllable • Hualde (2000) argues that they should be analyzed as (LH)*, where none of the two tonal landmarks have priority:

4. Spanish pre-nuclear rising accents (Some background) While L is quite consistent (but see Willis 2003), a number of extraneous variables have been shown to affect the placement of the peak. This is so in different languages where peak delay is the norm (English, Greek, Catalan, Kinyarwanda, etc.) Among these: Right-hand prosodic context; such as • upcoming pitch accents • upcoming boundary tones • upcoming word-boundaries (Llisterri et al. 1995, Steele 1986, Silverman and Pierrehumbert 1990, Prieto et al. 1995, Prieto 2005, Myers 2001)

5. Upcoming word-boundaries in Romance The position of the accented syllable within the word seems to have a significant effect on the position of the peak in rising pre-nuclear accents. In fact, Estebas-Vilaplana’s (2000, 2003) data on Central Catalan shows a very robust word-boundary effect: f0 peaks were consistently anchored to the offset of the word with which they were associated. This was true for oxytonic, paroxytonic and proparoxytonic words. Consequently, she analyzes pre-nuclear accents as: L*…H-wd (the peak is a word-edge tone)

6. Upcoming word-boundaries in Romance Prieto (forthcoming) goes onto test Estebas-Vilaplana’s (2000, 2003) proposal in a controlled experiment: she comparatively studies tune-text association in minimal pairs that differ only for word-boundary placement (in Central Catalan), e.g. Comprà ventalls ‘she bought fans’ Compraven talls ‘they used to buy pieces’ Buscà vanguàrdies ‘she looked for news’ Buscaven guàrdies ‘they used to look for policemen’

7. Upcoming word-boundaries in Romance Prieto’s (forthcoming) results for Catalan show that upcoming word-boundaries do play a significant role in f0 peak placement: word-medial rising accents were more displaced in the post-accentual syllable than word-final ones, which tended to fall (although also in the post-accentual syllable) closer to the left (i.e. closer to the offset of the stressed syllable). However, she argues against Estebas-Vilaplana (2003), since all accents are displaced to the post-tonic syllable, the peak cannot be anchored to the word-edge. Thus, we have a H* and not L*...H-wd.

8. Upcoming word-boundaries in Romance The same is true for Spanish. Recent investigations presented in this conference (PaPI 2005) as de la Mota (2005) and Estebas-Vilaplana and Prieto (2005) show that, even though there is no strict alignment towards the word-edge, the stress-type of words (oxytonic, paroxytonic and proparoxytonic) are a conditioning factor in f0 peak placement.

9. Upcoming word-boundaries in Sp-ToBI It is possible that the influence of word-edges on peak placement takes place at the “phonetic implementation” level rather than at the phonology module (this is specially so if we assume a model of phonology in which only contrast matters – which is an assumption that not all phonologists share). In this case, it seems that this phenomenon should not affect a phonological-annotation system such as Sp-ToBI ... However, we believe that this should be discussed, and more research performed, since the location of stress is lexically contrastive in Spanish and, thus, the location (or the shape) of pitch peaks (or of pitch contours) could be a clear correlate of stress or stress-configuration – besides duration and, possibly, intensity.

10. More research on the effect of word-boundaries In order to gather whether word-boundaries have an effect on peak placement in Spanish pre-nuclear rising accents we designed an experiment with the following characteristics: • We varied the number of intervening unstressed syllables: 1, 2, 3, 4. • We moved the word-boundary as much as the Spanish lexicon would allow us, testing (under each condition above) for oxytonic, paroxytonic and proparoxytonic words. (This experiment was performed while de la Mota (2005) and Estebas-Vilaplana and Prieto (2005) were doing theirs – without us knowing it)

11. The present experiment - Methods General remarks: All pre-nuclear accents occurred within the VP, (minimizing the potential effect of V to trigger H-). They were all Noun + Adjective combinations. The Adjective was not the final accent in the phrase (to exclude any ubnknown potential effects of nuclear accents and/or final lowering). Manolo diseñó un jarDIN boNIto en su casa oxytonic ‘Manolo designed a beautiful garden in his house’ Ellos vieron un MOno GRANde en Gibraltar paroxytonic ‘They saw a big monkey in Gibraltar’ Pedro miraba la BOveda boNIta de la catedral proparoxytonic ‘Pedro was looking at the beautiful ceiling of the cathedral

12. The present experiment - Materials • (Tonal clash): one intervening unstressed syllable: paroxytonic:óo#ó; oxytonic: ó#oó [8 + 8] • (Non-tonal clash): two or more intervening unstressed syllables: [12 + 12 + 12] 2 unstressed syllables (oxytonic words: ó#ooó; paroxytonic: óo#oó; proparoxytonic: óoo#ó) [4 + 4 + 4] 3 unstressed syllables (oxytonic words: ó#oooó; paroxytonic: óo#ooó; proparoxytonic: óoo#oó). We cannot move the boundar further to the right… [4 + 4 + 4] 4 unstressed syllables (oxytonic words: ó#ooooó; paroxytonic: óo#oooó; proparoxytonic: óoo#ooó). We cannot move the boundary further to the right… [4 + 4 + 4]

13. The present experiment - Materials Thus, our factors (independent variables) where: • Stress type: number of unstressed syllables between the lexically stressed syllable and the word-edge. (= 0, 1, 2) • Number of unstressed syllables between the lexically stressed syllable of the first word (the N) and the lexically stressed syllable of the second word: Clash (1) vs Non-clash (2, 3, 4). [This is a controlled variable rather than a factor, here]

14. The present experiment - Procedures Four speakers (only 3 will be shown today) read a total set of 52 sentences, two times (only 1 repetition will be shown today). In total: 4 * 2 * 52 = 416 sentences. [Today: 3 * 1 * 52 = 156 sentences] Of these, 5 sentences of the same speaker had to be excluded due to pausing between the two words and/or de-accenting of the relevant pitch-accent Recordings took place in a sound-treated room, through a head-set microphone, and the speech was digitized through CSL (Kay Elemetrics) The subjects were reading from a slide presentation on a computer screen (each sentence was a slide) The subjects: Two from Andalusia and one form Murcia, two females, one male. In their mid-twenties.

15. The present experiment - Measurements Measurements were made on simultaneous displays of a sound wave, a wide-band spectrogram, and an f0 track. We used PRAAT (Boersma and Weenink 1996-2005) The following landmarks were manually placed: • Onset of the stressed syllable: o • Offset of the stressed syllable: c • Offset of the word: w • Highest f0 peak: h

16. The present experiment - Measurements Our dependent variables, the values that we are observing (and comparing) are: • Peak delay relative to the distance from the onset of the stressed syllable to the offset of the word: peak delay (distance from onset to the peak), divided by word-duration (distance from onset to word-edge): RWD [on the graphs, “1” represents the word’s right edge] • Peak delay relative to the distance from the onset to the offset of the stressed syllable: peak delay, divided by syllable duration: RSYLL [on the graphs, “1” represents the stressed syllable’s right edge]

17. Results - RWD in Clash contexts(wbound 0 = oxytones vs wbound 1 = paroxytones)

18. Results - RSYLL in Clash contexts(wbound 0, oxytones vs wbound 1, paroxytones)

19. Results - Clash contexts (oxytones vs paroxytones) A general independent t-test (collapsing all three speakers) shows that: • There is no significant difference between oxytonic and paroxytonic words regarding RWD (position of the peak relative to the word-edge, i.e. the duration of the post-accentual part of the word). t(1, 44) = 1.274; p =0.209. Results are not significant overall. • There is a difference between oxytonic and paroxytonic words regarding RSYLL (position of the peak relative to the offset of the stressed syllable, i.e. the duration of the stressed syllable). t(1, 44) = 3.437; p = 0.001. Results are significant overall. • Thus, paroxytones have a greater peak delay than oxytones. The word edge affects peak placement in this condition.

20. Results - RWD in Non-clash contexts(oxytones, paroxytones, and proparoxytones)

21. Results - RSYLL in Non-clash contexts(oxytones, paroxytones, and proparoxytones)

22. Results - Non-clash contexts(oxytones, paroxytones, and proparoxytones) The data were submitted to a One-way ANOVA with stress type as the only factor (three levels), all subjects collapsed: • There is no significant scale difference between oxytonic, paroxytonic and proparoxytonic words regarding RWD (position of the peak relative to the word-edge). However, oxytonic and proparoxytonic words are significantly different. F(2, 102) = 9.411; p < 0.000. • There is a significant difference between, on the one hand, oxytones, and, on the other, paroxytones and proparoxytones regarding RSYLL (position of the peak relative to the offset of the stressed syllable). F(2, 102) = 18.202; p , 0.000. Recall that only for oxytones, the offset of the stressed syllable is also the word-edge.

23. Conclusions of present experiment The presence or absence of right-hand, upcoming word-boundaries has been shown to play a relevant role in peak delay in Spanish pre-nuclear accents. • In tonal-clash contexts (oxytones vs paroxytones) RWD proved to be very reliable in predicting peak placement, while RSYLL showed significant differences. • However, in non-tonal-clash contexts (oxytones vs paroxytones vs proparoxytones) results were only slightly similar: RWD shows a difference between oxytones and paroxytones vs proparoxytones (which occur earlier). RSYLL shows a difference between oxytones vs paroxytones and proparoxytones (which are consistently displaced to the post-tonic syllable).

24. Conclusions of present experiment Much more data is needed before we arrive at any conclusion. In any case, even though our results are different from de la Mota’s (2005) and Estebas-Vilaplana and Prieto’s (2005) [mainly in that most of our oxytones reach their peak within the bounds of the tonic syllable, while in theirs peaks were almost always displaced to the post-tonic], we believe that the three investigations show a strong, consistent effect of word boundaries in the location of pitch or f0 peaks. Where do we go from here?

25. Spontaneous speech Francisco will show examples of oxytones, paroxytones and proparoxytones in pre-nuclear position collected from a corpus of spontaneous speech. The corpus of spontaneous speech was collected from unscripted TV speech; that is, from a given TV program of the public TV of the autonomous region of Andalusia, Spain, in which old speakers are interviewed. It can be seen that there is an overall (impressionistic) tendency for stress-configuration of lexical items to affect peak position: many oxytones reach their peaks within their bounds while no paroxytones or proparoxytones do. Also, many proparoxytones reach their peaks not during the post-tonic syllable but during the post-post-tonic one, while paroxytones reach theirs during the post-tonic syllable…

26. Overall conclusions and questions for discussion Word boundaries affect the location of melodic peaks in both lab speech and spontaneous speech. • This poses at least one problem for an AM approach to intonational phonology: i.e. if pitch avents are organized in one autosegment, why is it that word-boundaries affect intonational peaks so much (other conditioning factors such as upcoming boundary tones or upcoming pitch accents are located in the same autosegment…) We seem to need a more integrated model of prosodic phonology in which different modules, if they exist, interact with each other. • This poses one problem for Sp-ToBI: i.e. if we are looking for contrastive pitch accents, should we consider consistent differences in the pitch shape of words with contrastive stress-configuration as contrastive pitch accents?