韵律学和英语的韵律结构Prosody and English Prosodic Structure.ppt

WEEK 9Intonation and English Prosodic Structure,Elisabeth NorcliffeLing 11024 May 2005,Overview,Prosody and prosodic structureThe phonetic sideThe phonological sideIntonationFunctionsCharacterizing intonation:ToBIToBI and English prosodic structurePost-Nuclear domain:a test case,The suprasegmental properties of speech,Phonetically,speech cannot be characterized just by sequences of phonemes,syllables and words.There are additional properties of speech:pitch,duration,stress.These are the suprasegmental properties of speech.,Prosody,Prosody:The suprasegmental information of natural speech,Aspects of Prosody,I met Mary and Elenas mother atthe mall yesterday.,Prosodic structure,I met Mary and Elenas mother at the mall yesterday,Mary&Elenas mother,mall,(from Vendetti 2001),I met Mary and Elenas mother atthe mall yesterday.,I met Mary and Elenas mother at the mall yesterday,Mary,mall,Elenas mother,Separate phrases,with expanded pitch movements(from Vendetti 2001).,I met Mary and Elenas mother atthe mall yesterday.,The phonological aspect of prosody,The hierarchical organization of segments into constituents.Organization is determined by relative prominences at each level of structure,Prominences,Prominence at the word level:Distinguishes stressed syllables from unstressed syllables.Suprasegmental features:stress,length,Prominences at the sentence level:Divides utterances into phrasal chunksPitch accents,boundary tones,length,Prosodic structure,Utterance UIntonational PIPIP Intermediate P XPXPXPWordW W W W W Syllable S S S S S S S S S S,The phonetic side of prosody,Deals with the acoustic correlates of prosodic organizationVarious suprasegmental acoustic properties function as cues for the suprasegmental features.,photographphotography,Phonetic correlates of prosody:Stress,Stress is cued by duration and/or amplitude at the word level.Stressed syllables are longer and louder.,Legumes are a GOOD source of vitamins,(from Vendetti 2001),Stress is cued by F0(pitch)at the phrase level(i.e.,pitch accents).Stressed words have pitch accents.,Whenever I eat cake,I laugh Whenever I eat,I laugh,Phonetic correlates of prosody:Structural position,A segments position in the prosodic structure also has particular phonetic properties,for example:Pre boundary lengthening:Prosodic structure is correlated with pre-boundary lengthening(the lengthening of a segment at the end of a prosodic constituent).,Summary,Prosody:suprasegmental informationTwo aspects:Phonology(prosodic structure,defined by suprasegmental features)Phonetics(acoustic correlates of the suprasegmental features),The high end of the prosodic hierarchy:Intonation,Intonation is the controlled modulation of voice pitch across a phrase or phrases.SignificantUtterances differing only in intonation differ in meaningSystematic Finite number of intonation patterns in a given languageLanguage specific,Are WATERMELONS a good source ofvitamins?,No,LEGUMES are a good source of vitamins,Functions of intonation in English:,LEGUMES are a good source of vitamins,(from Vendetti 2001),Are legumes a good source of IRON?,No,legumes are a good source of VITAMINS,Information structure in English:,legumes are a good source of VITAMINS,(from Vendetti 2001),Functions of intonation,Aspects of meaning,information structureLanguage specific,The functions of intonation in English,When danger threatens your children call the police?,The functions of intonation in English:Syntactic structure,When danger threatens your children call the policeWhen danger threatens your children call the police,Some functions of intonation,Aspects of syntactic structure(phrasing,resolution of structural ambiguities)(Possibly)language universal,Characterizing intonation,Abstract contours can be described as a string of categorically distinct elements:target pitches(pitch accents).Pitch accents associate with stressed syllables in words in context.,ToBI,A system for characterizing English intonation in terms of target pitches.,Intonational phrase,Tone:H*H*L-L%Segmental:We know a man in our areaTone:H*L*H-H%Segmental:We know a man in our area?,Th a t ones for M a r i a nna.H*L-L+H*L-L%,Th a t ones for M a r i a nna.,Summary,Intonation:the high end of prosodic structureFunctions of intonation:Meaning,information structureSyntactic structure(disambiguation)Characterizing intonationToBI:abstract contours sequences of accents,Back to Prosodic structure,Pitch accents and boundary tones of the ToBI system are used to define precisely the higher levels of prosodic structure in English:,ToBI and prosodic structure,There are two levels of prosodic phrasing above the level of the prosodic word:Intermediate phraseIntonational phrase,Prosodic hierarchy,Utterance UIntonational PIPIP Intermediate P XPXPXPWordW W W W WSyllable S S S S S S S S S S,Prosodic structure:phrasing,1.The intermediate phrase:a)contains one or more pitch accents(L*,L+H*,etc.)b)followed by a phrase accent(H-,L-)(a tone that fills up the space after the last pitch accent in a phrase).2.The intonational phrase:a)contains at least one intermediate phraseb)followed by an H%or L%boundary tone.,Th a t ones for M a r i a nna.H*L-L+H*L-L%,An example:ToBI,Th a t ones for M a r i a nna.,Intonational phrase,Intermediate phrase,Intermediate phrase,Summary,Top levels of prosodic structure(above the word level)defined according to the distribution of pitch accents and boundary tones.Two levels of phrasing above the word:Intermediate phraseIntonational phrase,Pitch accents and English prosodic structure(from Norcliffe and Jaeger 2005,Jaeger and Norcliffe 2005),The prevalent theories of English prosodic structure(including ToBI)all include some form of the following pitch accent requirement:Pitch Accent Requirement(PAR)Prosodic units above the level of the prosodic word contain at least one pitch accent.New evidence from the post-nuclear domain that questions this claim(Norcliffe and Jaeger 2005).,The post-nuclear domain,The strongest accent in a phrase is the final accent,also called the nuclear accent.A:What did Andrew do?B:Andrew gave John a book.If for some reason the nuclear accent is relatively early in phrase,this results in a long stretch of de-accented material.,The post-nuclear domain,A:Did Michael give you a book?B:No,ANDREW gave me a book.The de-accented material following the nuclear accent of a phrase up to the phrase boundary is the post-nuclear domain.,De-accented post-nuclear domain,Predictions of prevalent theories for the post-nuclear domain,There should be no prosodic phrase breaks in the post-nuclear domain.A:Did Michael give you a book?B:No,ANDREW gave me a book.Otherwise there would be a prosodic phrase without an accent.Alas,nobody had tested this.,The experiment,Idea-Gather production data to test whether prosodic phrasing can occur in the post-nuclear domain.ImplementationTake syntactically ambiguous stimuli known to be disambiguated by prosodic phrasing via phrase final lengthening(cf.Price et al.1991)But unlike earlier studies:Elicit stimuli in a way that the locus of ambiguity falls into a post-nuclear domain.,Disambiguating syntactic ambiguities via prosodic phrasing,Prosodic phrasing can disambiguate syntactic ambiguitiesE.g.verb-preposition vs.verb-particle ambiguities,The ambiguity of choice,Price et al.(1991)show that verb-preposition vs.verb-particle ambiguities are reliably disambiguated by prosodic phrasing(via phrase final lengthening).Verb-PrepositionA1:Heartless violence led to a bloody victory.A2:The Vikings won%over their enemies%.Verb-ParticleA1:Gentle persuasion led to a friendly settlement.A2:The Vikings won over%their enemies%.,Phrase-final lengthening,Putting the ambiguity in the post-nuclear domain,Unlike earlier studies,we elicited targets so that a nuclear accent fell before the locus of ambiguity.A1:disambiguating discourse B1:So,the Romans won over their enemies?Target sentenceA2:No,the VIKINGS won over their enemies.Thus,according to PAR theories,there should be no prosodic phrase break to disambiguate between the two readings.,De-accented post-nuclear domain,Procedure&Subjects,Target sentences were always read by the subject.The other speaker was a confederate Participants-4 subjects read the stimuli from counter-balanced lists.,Predictions,If prosodic phrasing takes place in the post-nuclear domain phrase-final lengthening should cause significant lengthening of,Predictions,the verb rime in the Verb-Preposition reading.Verb-PrepositionA2:The VIKINGS won%over their enemies%.the particle rime in the Verb-Particle reading.Verb-ParticleA2:The VIKINGS won over%their enemies%.,Phrase-final lengthening?,Results Predictions are met,The verb rime was significantly longer in the Verb-Preposition reading.(mean difference 18ms;p 0.01)(3a)w o n over their enemies.The particle rime was significantly longer in the Verb-Particle reading.(mean difference 25ms;p 0.01)(3b)won o v e r their enemies.,Accents in the post-nuclear stretch,However,despite the presence of the nuclear accent(e.g.on Vikings),some of our data contained secondary pitch accents in the post nuclear stretch(c.27%of the sample).Why?Partially due to reader disfluencies(especially pausing)Otherwise as yet unaccounted for factors(which in themselves are theoretically significant and deserve further study)Immediate significance for our study:results may have been influenced by pitch accent placement,Results(reduced sample size),We removed all accented examples,and also any non-accented examples whose pair was accented(i.e.,an overly conservative approach,to test the strength of our previous results)With the accented material removed,the same trends were nevertheless observed:The verb rime remained longer in the Verb-Preposition reading.(mean difference 21ms;p=0.07)The particle rime remained longer in the Verb-Particle reading.(mean difference 20ms;p=0.17),Summary,We do observe phrase final lengthening in the post-nuclear domainThis was supported by another pilot using a similar but different syntactic ambiguity.This argues that the post-nuclear domain is divided into more than one prosodic phrase the second prosodic phrase doesnt bear any pitch accent.,What this means,Defining levels of prosodic structure only by the presence of pitch accents is not always sufficient.Even where there are no pitch accents,other prosodic cues such as duration can signal prosodic constituency,References,Beaver,D.,Clark,B.,Flemming,E.,Jaeger,T.F.and Wolters,M.When Semantics Meets Phonetics.Acoustical Studies of Second Occurrence Focus.Under submission.Beckman,M.E.,Hirschberg,J.,&Shattuck-Hufnagel,S.(2005).The original ToBIsystem and the evolution of the ToBI framework.In S.-A.Jun(ed.)Prosodic Typology-The Phonology of Intonation and Phrasing.Beckman,M.E.(1996).The parsing of prosody.Language and CognitiveProcesses,11,17-67.Beckman,M.E.,&Pierrehumbert,J.B(1986).Intonational structure in Japaneseand English.Phonology Yearbook,3,255-309.Gussenhoven,C.&Rietveld,A.C.M.(1992).Intonation contours,prosodicstructure,and preboundary lenghthening.Journal of Phonetics 20,283-303.Jaeger,T.Florian&Norcliffe,E.(2005).Accent-free prosodic phrases?Accents and phrasing in the post-nuclear domain,LSA,79th Annual Meeting,Oakland,References(cont.),Price,P.J.,Ostendorf,S.,Shattuck-Huffnagel,S.,&Fong,C.(1991).The use ofprosody in syntactic disambiguation.Journal of the Acoustical Society of America,9,29562970.K.Silverman,Beckman,M.,Pitrelli,J.,Ostendorf,M.,Wightman,C.,Price,P.,Pierrehumbert,J.,and Hirschberg,J.ToBI:a standard for labelling English prosody.in Proceedings of ICSLP 92,1992,vol.2,pp.867-870.Steinhauer,K.&Friederici,A.D.(2001).Prosodic boundaries,comma rules,and brain responses:The Closure Positive Shift in ERPs as a universal marker for prosodic phrasing in listeners and readers.Journal of Psycholinguistic Research.30(3)267-295.Wagner,M.(2004).Asymmetries in Prosodic Domain Formation.To appear in:N.Richards and M.McGinnis(eds.):Proceedings of the Phase-Workshop at MIT in January 2003.36pp.,