• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.99-108
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• 2013

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.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.19-26
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• 2011

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. Drawing on a prosodically annotated large-scale speech data from the Buckeye corpus of conversational speech of American English, the current study first evaluated the reliability of prosody annotation by a large number of ordinary listeners and later examined whether and how prosodic prominence influences the phonetic realization of multiple acoustic parameters in everyday conversational speech. The results showed that all the measures of acoustic parameters including pitch, loudness, duration, and spectral balance are increased when heard as prominent. These findings suggest that prosodic prominence enhances the phonetic characteristics of the acoustic parameters. The results also showed that the degree of phonetic enhancement vary depending on the types of the acoustic parameters. With respect to the formant structure, the findings from the present study more consistently support Sonority Expansion Hypothesis than Hyperarticulation Hypothesis, showing that the lexically stressed vowels are hyperarticulated only when hyperarticulation does not interfere with sonority expansion. Taken all into account, the present study showed that prosodic prominence modulates the phonetic realization of the acoustic parameters to the direction of the phonetic strengthening in everyday conversational speech and ordinary listeners are attentive to such phonetic variation associated with prosody in speech perception. However, the present study also showed that in everyday conversational speech there is no single dominant acoustic measure signaling prosodic prominence and listeners must attend to such small acoustic variation or integrate acoustic information from multiple acoustic parameters in prosody perception.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.207-214
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• 2001

This study describes the focus in nine structure types of English relative clauses (SS, SO, SP, PS, PO, PP, OS, OO, OP), classified according to the grammatical role of both the head that the relative clause modifies and the gap within the relative clause. The informants for this study are 2 middle school students, 4 high school students in four formal classroom in Korea and 2 native speakers. To obtain the accurate intonation patterns, Visi-Pitch II Model 3300 was used for data analyses. Major findings are as follows: (1) The feature of the intonation in English relative clauses showed prosodic prominence at the head, but the English learners in Korea didn't show prosodic prominence; (2) the fact that all heads have prosodic prominence says that the head in relative clauses has prosodic focus; (3) in the fact that the English learners have flat pitch in the whole sentences, the problem of intonation education is found out.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.1-7
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• 2023

This study investigates how the phonological and phonetic information of vowels influences prosodic prominence among linguistically untrained listeners using public speech in American English. We first examined the speech material's phonetic realization of vowels (i.e., maximum F0, F0 range, phone rate [as a measure of duration considering the speech rate of the utterance], and mean intensity). Results showed that the high vowels /i/ and /u/ likely had the highest max F0, while the low vowels /æ/ and /ɑ/ tended to have the highest mean intensity. Both high and low vowels had similarly high phone rates. Next, we examined the effects of the vowels' phonological and phonetic information on listeners' perceptions of prosodic prominence. The results showed that vowels significantly affected the likelihood of perceived prominence independent of acoustic cues. The high and low vowels affected probability of perceived prominence less than the mid vowels /ɛ/ and /ʌ/, although the former two were more likely to be phonetically enhanced in the speech than the latter. Overall, these results suggest that perceptions of prosodic prominence in English are not directly influenced by signal-driven factors (i.e., vowels' acoustic information) but are mediated by expectation-driven factors (e.g., vowels' phonological information).

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.1-8
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• 2019

This study aims to investigate how prosodic prominence is perceived in relation to word class information (or parts-of-speech) by Korean learners of English compared with native English speakers in public speech. Two groups, Korean learners of English and native English speakers, were asked to judge words perceived as prominent simultaneously while listening to a speech. Parts-of-speech and three acoustic cues (i.e., max F0, mean phone duration, and mean intensity) were analyzed for each word in the speech. The results showed that content words tended to be higher in pitch and longer in duration than function words. Both groups of listeners rated prominence on content words more frequently than on function words. This tendency, however, was significantly greater for Korean learners of English than for native English speakers. Among the parts-of-speech of the content words, Korean learners of English were more likely than native English speakers to judge nouns and verbs as prominent. This study presents evidence that Korean learners of English consider most, if not all, content words as landing locations of prosodic prominence, in alignment with the previous study on the production of prominence.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.1 no.3
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• pp.29-37
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• 2009

This paper presents results from speech production experiments on English, Korean, and Hindi that compare variation in the acoustic expression of dissimilar phonological laryngeal contrast in stops conditioned by prosodic prominence. Target stops are analyzed from utterance-initial, -medial, and -final positions, with a variation in contrastive focal accent, from the speech data by six male American English speakers, five male Seoul Korean speakers, and five male Delhi Hindi speakers. The results show that prosodic prominence conditions enhanced distinctiveness between contrastive segments in the three languages. The manner in which prosodic prominence and prosodic phrase structure is marked at the level of segmental variation is, however, found to be language-specific to some extent. In addition, a correlation between the size of the phonological inventory and the corresponding acoustic variation was found but the linear correlation was not strongly supported with the findings in the present study.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2006.05a
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• pp.71-74
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• 2006

The purpose of this study is to observe how Korean listeners detect a target phoneme with 'Focus' represented by prosodic prominence and question-induced semantic emphasis. According to the automated phoneme detection task using E-Prime, Korean listeners detected phoneme targets more rapidly when the target-bearing words were in prominence position and in question-induced position. However, when phoneme targets were in prominence position, response time was much faster than in question-induced position. The results suggest that the prosodic prominence which is explicit method of focus representation be more effective than question-inducing, implicit method of it, in phoneme detecting.

• MALSORI
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• no.60
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• pp.97-108
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• 2006

The purpose of this study is to observe how Korean listeners detect a target phoneme with 'Focus' represented by prosodic prominence and question-induced semantic emphasis, and with intonational manipulation. According to the automated phoneme detection task using E-Prime, the Korean listeners detected phoneme targets more rapidly when the target-bearing words were in prominence position and in question-induced position. However, the presence of question-induced semantic emphasis reduced the prominence effect, so two effects interacted: when question-induced emphasis were primarily given as a cue, prominence which was given as secondary cue affected less to fine the new information. Besides, the intonation with manipulation was responded to faster than without manipulation.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.17-24
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• 2024

The Korean three-way stop contrast (lenis, aspirated, fortis) is currently undergoing a sound change, such that the primary cue distinguishing lenis and aspirated stops is shifting from voice onset time (VOT) to F0. Despite recent discussions of this shift, research on voice quality, traditionally considered an additional cue signaling the contrast, remains sparse. This study investigated the extent to which the associated voice quality [as reflected in the acoustic measurements of H1^*-H2^*, H1^*- A1^*, and cepstral peak prominence (CPP)] contributes to the three-way stop contrast, and how the realization is conditioned by prominence- vs. boundary-induced prosodic strengthening amid the ongoing sound change. Results for 12 native Korean speakers indicate that there was a substantial distinction in voice quality among the three stop categories with the breathiness of the vowel being the greatest after the lenis, intermediate after the aspirated, and least after the fortis stops, indicating the role of voice quality in the maintenance of the three-way stop contrast. Furthermore, prosodic strengthening has different effects on the contrast and contributes to the enhancement of the phonological contrast contingent on whether it is induced by prominence or boundary.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.165-180
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• 2001

In this paper prosodic characteristics of French language are analysed with a corpus of radio interview. Intonation patterns are interpreted in terms of raising pattern, focal raising pattern and falling pattern. Accentual prominence is classified in two types, rhythmic accent and focal accent. Focal accent permit to explain the cohesion in a utterance or between two utterances. As a prosodic variable of discourse pauses are described by their form of realization (filled pause, silent pause, hesitation etc), their distribution and their function in utterance.