Prosody and Phonetics: Exploring Sound Patterns in Languages

1. Linguistic Phonetics in the UCLA Phonetics Lab Pat Keating Sound to Sense / June 11, 2004

2. I. Language description Archives of recordings Korean Intonation Phonation

3. Intonation • ToBI: Tones and Break Indices • Intonation in 14 languages: Prosodic Typology: The Phonology of Intonation and Phrasing (Sun-Ah Jun, ed.) • Phonology and phonetics of intonation/ ToBI models of Korean (Seoul, Chonnam, Kyungsang), French, Greek, Argentinian Spanish, Farsi

4. Phonation Contrastive phonation types (voice qualities) in languages: Modal, breathy, creaky e.g. Zapotec languages of Oaxaca, Mexico

5. a Zapotec language(San Lucas Quiavini) modal ‘gets bitter’ ‘rdaa’ breathy ‘gets ripe’ ‘rah’ creaky ‘lets go of’ ‘rdààà’ (M. Epstein)

6. Esposito (2003): Santa Ana del Valle Zapotec H1-F3 Modal: ‘can’ lat Breathy: ‘place’ la̤t Creaky: ‘field’ la̰ts

7. Effect of f0 on phonation: Contrast is minimal with high f0 (C. Esposito)

8. II. Prosody (Intonation description) Prosody and voice quality Phrasing and articulation

9. Prosody • the organization of speech into a hierarchy of units or domains = grouping function • some units are more prominent than others = prominence-marking function

10. Prosody and voice quality Epstein (2002, 2003): Voice quality variation in English as a function of position and accent 2 kinds of voice quality variation: • Modal vs. non-modal (breathy, creaky) • Variation within modal (laxer, tenser)

11. English phrase-final non-modal phonation Low boundary tones (but not low f0 in general) have more non-modal phonation (M. Epstein)

12. English prominence and non-modal phonation Unaccented words have more non-modal phonation (M. Epstein)

13. Phrasing and articulation • Prosody (grouping, prominence) affects segmental articulatory properties • How each segment’s phonological properties are realized phonetically depends in part on the segment’s position in prosodic structure

14. Prosodic strengthening • Some prosodic positions are stronger than others, and segments there are stronger • Articulatory strengthening: more extreme articulations • Stronger positions: derived from a prosodic hierarchy • Domain initial is a strong position

15. (partial) prosodic hierarchy across languages

16. Electropalatography studies • Compare peak linguopalatal contact of segments across prosodic positions, e.g. different initial positions • Several languages • English(Fougeron & Keating 1997) • Korean(Cho & Keating 2001; Kim 2001) • French(Fougeron 1998, 2001) • Taiwanese(Keating, Cho, Fougeron, Hsu 2003)

17. front Pseudo-palate for EPG(Kay Elemetrics)

18. Sample frame showing contact: Korean word-initial /n/ front 42% contacted Circles are electrodes; filled ones are contacted

19. Sample contacts: French /n/ …Tata / Nadia… …Tata Nadia… (C. Fougeron)

20. /t*/ /th/ /t/ /n/ 4 Korean consonantsin 4 initial positions

21. mid region contact channel region contact Korean fricatives in 3 positions (Kim 2001,2003) IPi APi Wi IPi APi Wi

22. Bigger picture:Prosody and production planning • Each phonetic segment - with its features - is a terminal node in a prosodic tree • So each segment has a position in the tree relative to the domains and prominences • Pronunciation of each feature depends in part on this prosodic position

23. accent stress Features in a prosodic tree IP wp ip ip egi Wd Wd Wd thatnew ei σσ σσ ð pro pa gan da… [+continuant] p p [-continuant] [-voice]

24. III. Coarticulation Initial strengthening Lexicon

25. Coarticulation and initial strengthening Cho (2002, 2004): • Coarticulation: interaction effects between neighboring segments, generally due to articulatory overlap • How does prosodic strengthening affect overlap and thus coarticulation? Does a “strong” segment “resist” coarticulation?

26. V1 V2 [a] [a] b [i] [i] IP ip Wd Vowel-to-vowel coarticulationacross different boundaries # And each vowel pitch-accented or not (T. Cho)

27. X-axis Y-axis EMA: Carstens Articulograph Receivers on articulators L1 T2 T1 T3 L2 Jaw (T. Cho)

28. 50 Wd [i#a] ip 40 IP 30 Y (%) Tongue Height 20 [a#a] 10 70 80 40 50 60 X (%) Tongue Backness Less effect of V1 /i/ on V2 /a/ across a larger boundary /a/ pulled towards /i/ (T. Cho)

29. Coarticulation and the lexicon Brown [Scarborough] (2001, 2004): Are words from dense lexical neighborhoods, with many lexical competitors, produced with more or less coarticulation than other words?

30. easy to access • hard to access Lexical competitors Low Relative Frequency Low-R High Relative Frequency High-R (R. Scarborough)

31. Production of nasal coarticulation • Compared “hard” and “easy” CVN and NVC words on nasal coarticulation during the vowel • using the Chen (1996) measure A1-P0 Sample CVN words

32. CVN result less nasal more nasal “hard” words “easy” words Answer: more coarticulation for “hard” words (R. Scarborough)

33. IV. Production and Perception Optical prosody Heritage language ability

34. Optical prosody:phrasal stress-accent • Extents, durations, and velocities of movements of lips, chin, head, and eyebrows are all potentially visible to perceivers • Production-perception comparison: Which of the optical correlates of stress account for visual intelligibility?

35. Production of phrasal stress “So TOMMY gave Timmy a song from Debby.” “So Tommy gave TIMMY a song from Debby.” “So Tommy gave Timmy a song from DEBBY.” “So Tommy gave Timmy a song from Debby.”

36. Facepoint markers locations and 11 measurements • Left eyebrow displacement • Head displacement • Interlip maximum distance • Interlipopening displacement • Interlip closing displacement • Lower lip opening peak velocity • Lower lip closing peak velocity • Chin opening displacement • Chin opening peak velocity • Chin closing displacement • Chin closing peak velocity eyebrow marker head marker lip markers chin marker

37. Correlates of phrasal stress • from all 11 measures, e.g. • Chin and eyebrow measures are most consistent across speakers Chin Closing Peak Velocity accented unaccented

38. Perception of phrasal stress • 72 sentences from this corpus, video presentation (no sound) • 16 hearing perceivers (not screened for lipreading ability) • Task: See written sentence, click on the name perceived as stressed, or on “NoStress”

39. Visual perception above chance By perceiver By talker Line shows significantly above chance performance

40. Production-perception comparison:Correlational analysis • Chin opening measures (opening displacement, peak opening velocity) account for most variance in perception • Not chin closing, lips, or head or eyebrow movements, even though these cues are available

41. Heritage Language ability Jun & Au with students, e.g. Oh et al. (2003) compared 4 groups of adults: • Lifelong native Korean speakers • Childhood-only speakers (stopped by 7) • Childhood-and-later overhearers • Control group (novices)

42. Adult productionof Korean VOT • Childhood-only speakers as good as native speakers • Childhood hearers show no advantage (nor on overall accent rating, not shown) (Oh et al.)

43. Adult perceptionof Korean VOT • Childhood-only speakers as good as native speakers • Childhood hearers also as good as native speakers (Oh et al.)

44. Conclusion:UCLA Phonetics Lab Language description Prosody Coarticulation Production and perception And much more!