DOI QR코드

DOI QR Code

Prosodic Modifications of the Internal Phonetic Structure of Monosyllabic CVC Words in Conversational Speech

  • Received : 2013.02.02
  • Accepted : 2013.03.21
  • Published : 2013.03.31

Abstract

Previous laboratory studies have shown that prosodic structures are encoded in the modulations of phonetic patterns of speech including suprasegmental as well as segmental features. In particular, effects of prosodic context on duration and intensity of syllables and words have been widely reported. Drawing on prosodically annotated large-scale speech data from the Buckeye corpus of conversational speech of American English, the current study attempted to examine whether and how prosodic prominence and phrase boundary of everyday conversational speech, as determined by a large group of ordinary listeners, are related to the phonetic realization of duration and intensity. The results showed that the patterns of word durations and intensities are influenced by prosodic structure. Closer examinations revealed, however, that the effects of prosodic prominence are not the same as those of prosodic phrase boundary. With regard to intensity measures, the results revealed the systematic changes in the patterns of overall RMS intensity near prosodic phrase boundary but the prominence effects are restricted to the nucleus. In terms of duration measures, both prosodic prominence and phrase boundary are the most closely related to the lengthening of the nucleus. Yet, prosodic prominence is more closely related to the lengthening of the onset while phrase boundary lengthens the coda duration more. The findings from the current study suggest that the phonetic realizations of prosodic prominence are different from those of prosodic phrase boundary, and speakers signal different prosodic structures through deliberate modulations of the internal phonetic structure of words and listeners attend to such phonetic variations.

Keywords

References

  1. Turk, A. E. & Sawusch, J. R. (1996). The processing of duration and intensity cues to prominence. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Vol. 99, No. 6, 3782-3790. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.414995
  2. Cambier-Langeveld, T. & Turk, A. E. (1999). A cross-linguistic study of accentual lengthening: Dutch vs. English. Journal of Phonetics, Vol. 27, 255-280. https://doi.org/10.1006/jpho.1999.0096
  3. Klatt, D. H. (1975). Vowel lengthening is syntactically determined in a connected discourse. Journal of Phonetics, Vol. 3, 129-140.
  4. Wightman, C. W., Shattuck-Hufnagel, S., Ostendorf, M., & Price, P. J. (1992). Segmental durations in the vicinity of prosodic phrase boundaries. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Vol. 91, No. 3, 1707-1717. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.402450
  5. Cambier-Langeveld, T., Nespor, M., & van Heuven, V. J. (1997). The domain of final lengthening in production and perception in Dutch. The Proceedings of the 5th European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology, (September 22-25, Rhodes, Greece).
  6. Fry, D. B. (1955). Duration and intensity as physical correlates of linguistic stress. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Vol. 27, 1765-8.
  7. Fry, D. B. (1958). Experiments in the perception of stress. Language and Speech, Vol. 1, No. 3, 126-150. https://doi.org/10.1177/002383095800100207
  8. Lieberman, P. (1960). Some acoustic correlates of word stress in American English. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Vol. 32, No. 4, 451-454. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.1908095
  9. Heldner, M. (2001). Spectral emphasis as a perceptual cue to prominence. TMH-QPSR, Vol. 42, No. 1, 51-57.
  10. Heldner, M. (2003). On the reliability of overall intensity and spectral emphasis as acoustic correlates of focal accents in Swedish. Journal of Phonetics, Vol. 31, No. 1, 39-62. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0095-4470(02)00071-2
  11. Fant, G., Kruckenberg, A., Liljencrants, J., & Hertegard, S. (2000). Acoustic-phonetic studies of prominence in Swedish. TMH-QPSR, Vol. 41, No. 2-3, 1-51.
  12. Kochanski, G., Grabe, J., Coleman, J., & Rosner, B. (2005). Loudness predicts prominence: fundamental frequency lends little. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Vol. 118, No. 2, 1038-1054. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.1923349
  13. Kochanski, G. (2006). Prosody beyond fundamental frequency. Methods in Empirical Prosody Research (Sudhoff, S., Lenertov'a, D., Meyer, R., Pappert, S., Augurzky, P., Mleinek, I., Richter, N., & Schlieber, J. Eds.), 1-43. New York: De Gruyter.
  14. Pitt, M. A., Johnson, K., Hume, E., Kiesling, S., & Raymond, W. (2005). The Buckeye corpus of conversational speech: labeling conventions and a test of transcriber reliability. Speech Communication, Vol. 45, 89-95. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.specom.2004.09.001
  15. Mo, Y. (2010). Prosody production and perception with conversational speech. Ph. D. Dissertation, Department of Linguistics, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
  16. Mo, Y. (2011). Acoustic correlates of prosodic prominence in conversational speech of American English, as perceived by ordinary listeners. Journal of the Korean Society of Speech Sciences, Vol. 3, No. 3, 19-26.