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Understanding ToBI: Intonational Meaning in Spoken Language

This presentation explores the ToBI (Tones and Break Indices) intonational framework, developed by prosody researchers between 1991 and 1994, aiming to provide a reliable labeling system for Standard American English and other languages. It addresses key concepts such as phonetic phrasing, pitch accents, and contours, while discussing their roles in communication. The study highlights the importance of prosodic features in disambiguating discourse, indicating speaker intention, and enhancing interpretability. Additionally, it evaluates the reliability of ToBI transcriptions across various contexts.

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Understanding ToBI: Intonational Meaning in Spoken Language

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  1. Intonational and Its Meanings Julia Hirschberg CS 6998

  2. Today • ToBI intonational framework • Spoken language and interpretations • Phrasing • Accent • Contours • Pitch Range • Amplitude and timing

  3. To(nes and)B(reak)I(ndices) • Developed by prosody researchers in four meetings over 1991-94 • Goals: • devise common labeling scheme for Standard American English that is robust and reliable • promote collection of large, prosodically labeled, shareable corpora • ToBI standards also proposed for Japanese, German, Italian, Spanish, British and Australian English,....

  4. Minimal ToBI transcription: • recording of speech • f0 contour • ToBI tiers: • orthographic tier: words • break-index tier: degrees of junction (Price et al ‘89) • tonal tier: pitch accents, phrase accents, boundary tones (Pierrehumbert ‘80) • miscellaneous tier: disfluencies, non-speech sounds, etc.

  5. Sample ToBI Labeling

  6. Online training material,available at: • http://www.ling.ohio-state.edu/phonetics/ToBI/ • Evaluation • Good inter-labeler reliability for expert and naive labelers: 88% agreement on presence/absence of tonal category, 81% agreement on category label, 91% agreement on break indices to within 1 level (Silverman et al. ‘92,Pitrelli et al ‘94)

  7. Pitch Accent/Prominence in ToBI • Which items are made intonationally prominent and how? • Accent type: • H* simple high (declarative) • L* simple low (ynq) • L*+H scooped, late rise (uncertainty/ incredulity) • L+H* early rise to stress (contrastive focus) • H+!H* fall onto stress (implied familiarity)

  8. Downstepped accents: • !H*, • L+!H*, • L*+!H • Degree of prominence: • within a phrase: HiF0 • across phrases

  9. Functions of Pitch Accent • Given/new information • S: Do you need a return ticket. • U: No, thanks, I don’t need a return. • Contrast (narrow focus) • U: No, thanks, I don’t need a RETURN…. (I need a time schedule, receipt,…) • Disambiguation of discourse markers • S: Now let me get you the train information. • U: Okay (thanks) vs. Okay….(but I really want…)

  10. Prosodic Phrasing in ToBI • ‘Levels’ of phrasing: • intermediate phrase: one or more pitch accents plus a phrase accent (H- or L- ) • intonational phrase: 1 or more intermediate phrases + boundary tone (H% or L% ) • ToBI break-index tier • 0 no word boundary • 1 word boundary • 2 strong juncture with no tonal markings • 3 intermediate phrase boundary • 4 intonational phrase boundary

  11. Functions of Phrasing • Disambiguates syntactic constructions, e.g. PP attachment: • S: You should buy the ticket with the discount coupon. • Disambiguates scope ambiguities, e.g. Negation: • S: You aren’t booked through Rome because of the fare. • Or modifier scope: • S: This fare is restricted to retired politicians and civil servants.

  12. L-L% L-H% H-L% H-H% H* L* L*+H

  13. L-L% L-H% H-L% H-H% L+H* H+!H* H* !H*

  14. Contour Examples • http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~julia/cs6998/cards/examples.html

  15. Contours: Accent + Phrasing • What do intonational contours ‘mean’ (Ladd ‘80, Bolinger ‘89)? • Speech acts (statements, questions, requests) S: That’ll be credit card? (L* H- H%) • Propositional attitude (uncertainty, incredulity) S: You’d like an evening flight.(L*+H L- H%) • Speaker affect (anger, happiness, love) U: I said four SEVEN one! (L+H* L- L%) • “Personality” S: Welcome to the Sunshine Travel System.

  16. Propositional attitude (uncertainty) Did you feed the animals? I fed the L*+H goldfish L-H% • Distinguish direct/indirect speech acts • Can you open the door?

  17. But these approaches are limited…. • Don’t capture generalizations across similar tunes • Aren’t predictive/explanatory: why does this contour convey what it does?

  18. And Other Things Contribute: Pitch Range and Timing (Rate, Pause) • Level of speaker engagement Hello vs. HELLO • Contour interpretation Rise/fall/rise (L*+H L-H%): Elephantiasis isn’t incurable • Discourse/topic structure: paratones

  19. How Do We Study Meaning? • Lab experiments • Corpus-based studies

  20. Next Week • Read handout/ suggested readings on speech analysis • Identify ~3 topic areas for possible class projects • Turn in a ranked list of 3 classes you’d like to help lead

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