Bettina BraunMax Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics

01.06.2007

Effects of dialect and context on the realisation of German prenuclear accents

Related work: effect of dialect on accents

Peters (1999): speakers from Hamburg placed f0 peak in nuclear high accents earlier than Berlin speakers (diff. 29ms or 79% vs. 57% of overall sylldur)

Atterer&Ladd (2004): Southern German speakers align peaks in prenuclear accents later than Northern Germans (34 vs 21ms)

no functional manipulation!

General research question

What happens when speakers from different dialectal backgrounds produce different functional categories?• Hyp 1: Dialectal differences (i.e. in alignment) persist

when producing different categories

• Hyp 2: Dialectal differences collaps when producing different functional categories sincefunctional demand is stronger

cnc

cnc

Related work: contrast in German

Sentences with a double contrast

thematic (prenuclear) accents have later and higher peaks (Braun, 2006)

Peter wants a green bicycle

and Johanna a blue one.

Theme Rheme

What do the twins want for Christmas?

Braun (2006)

Pairwise comparison of sentences produced in contrastive and non-contrastive paragraphs

Short sentences with preverbal PPs or NPs (i.e. Italiener sind sehr gastfreundlich)

Different numbers of pre and poststressed syllables

Speakers from all over Germany

Results: contrast affected• phonetic realization of theme accents (later and higher peaks) but

no different accent types!

• type of rheme accents (more falling accents (i.e. H+L*) than high ones (H*L-%)

Atterer&Ladd (2004)

Speakers from Munich and a not further defined “Northern region”

Long sentences with different syntactic structures (i.e. “Die Ernennung Meiers zum Minister wurde nicht von allen Parteimitgliedern begrüßt.”)

Different numbers of prestressed and poststressed syllables

Sentences read out of context from a list (possibly non-contrastive reading)

Results: sign. later L alignment and tendency for later H alignment for Southern Germans

This study

Highly controlled materials• Only one syntactic structure (subject-verb-object)

• Only one rhythmic structure

Participants• Speakers from Munich (Southeast of Germany) and

Münster (Northwest of Germany)

Question-answer methodology to elicit standard German with a regional ‘touch’

Elicitation

Non-contrastive theme accents:What did Johanna rent? – Johanna rented a car.

Contrastive theme accents:Sam rented a truck. And Johanna?– Johanna rented a car.

Non-corrective rheme accents:Who rented a car? – Johanna rented a car

Corrective rheme accent:Martin rented a car? – Johanna rented a car

Specific research questions

Do Northern and Southern Germans differ in choice of (theme and rheme) accent type when signalling contrast?

Do Southerners align all thematic rises later than Northerners, irrespective of context?

Is there an effect of dialect on the use of f0-excursion when expressing contrast?

Materials

10 triysyllabic proper names with stress on second syllable• Five with long stressed vowel, i.e. Marina, Ramona…

• Five with short stressed vowel (and ambisyllabic consonant), i.e. Johanna, Camilla, …

combined with 10 different verb phrases with a comparable grammatical and rhythmic structure (i.e. knitted an apron) via a pseudo Latin square

Questions recorded by speakers from the respective areas, all with rising intonation

Participants

9 female speakers from a 50km range around the citiy of Münster (recorded at Psychology Institute of the University of Münster)

9 female speakers from the city of Munich (recorded at the Institute for Phonetics of the LMU Munich); one had to be excluded because her phonemes were not Southern German

Naïve with respect to the purpose of the experiment

Procedure

Participants heard context question by a speaker of their region and read sentence that was presented on a computer screen

10 filler sentences without context question

4 randomised lists; every subject read two lists (50 trials each)

Only first list analyzed

Intonation Analysis

Both thematic and rhematic pitch accents labelled following GToBI (Grice et al, 2005)

2 types of theme accents: • L*H when stressed syll perceived as low,

• LH* when perceived as high

2 classes of rheme accents: • falling accents

• high accents

Results: theme accent types

No effect of contrast or dialect

Highly speaker specific • One Southern German bias for L*H

• 3 Northern and 3 Southern speakers bias for LH*

• 6 Northern and 4 Southern speakers no bias

(Bias: one accent four times as often as other accent)

Results: theme accent types ct’d

For 6 speakers without a bias towards a theme accent: in non-contrastive contexts, sign. more LH* than L*H accents

contrast * firstacc Crosstabulationa

Count

50 48 98

30 63 93

80 111 191

c

nc

contrast

Total

L*H LH*

firstacc

Total

bias = 0a.

χ2=6.9, df=1, p<0.01

Results: rheme accent types

No effect of region

Effect of contrast: in contrastive contexts sign. more falling than high rheme accents

(replication of Braun (2006) with different elicitation technique)

c nc Total

Falling rheme accent 111 65 176

High rheme accent 55 99 154

Total 166 164 330

χ2=24.6, df=1, p<0.0001

Acoustic phonetic analysis: example

Dependent measures

Alignment of the f0-minimum with respect to the start of the stressed syllable in ms: al(L,C0)

Alignment of the f0-maximum with respect to the poststressed vowel in ms: al(H,V1)

Rise-excursion in semitones

Analysis

Univariate Anovas with fixed factors• Region

• Contrast

• Vowel length

• Theme accent type

• Rheme accent type

L-alignment

Main effects of • contrast (for contrast 15ms later than for non-contrast)

• theme accent type (for L*H 51ms later than for LH*)

cnc

contrast

60.0

50.0

40.0

30.0

20.0

10.0

0.0

Mea

n a

l_L_C

0

south

north

region

ns ns

H-alignment

Main effects of• Region (for north 16ms later than for south)

• Contrast (for contrast 12ms later than for non-contrast)

• Vowel length (for short vowels 16ms later than for long vowels)

• Theme accent (for L*H 14ms later than for LH*)

• Rheme accent (for falling rheme accents 15ms later than for high rheme accent)

Interaction • Between contrast, rheme accent and region (p = 0.005)

H-alignment ct’d

No effect of contrast effect of contrast for N

cnc

contrast

80.0

60.0

40.0

20.0

0.0

Mea

n a

l_H

_V1

rheme accent: falling

south

north

region

High rheme accent

cnc

contrast

60.0

40.0

20.0

0.0

Mea

n a

l_H

_V1

rheme accent: high

south

north

region

37ms

27ms

***ns*** ***

Rise-excursion

Main effect of• Contrast (for contrast 0.8st larger than for non-

contrast)

• Theme accent (for LH* 0.7st larger than for LH*)

• Rheme accent (for falling rheme 1.3st larger than for high rheme)

Interaction• between region and contrast (p=0.016)

Rise-excursion ct’d

Northerners use rise-excursion to mark contrast; Southerners don’t

cnc

contrast

6.0

5.0

4.0

3.0

2.0

1.0

0.0

Mea

n ris

e_st

south

north

region

** ns

Conclusion

Contrast does not affect theme accent type

Contrast affected the phonetic realisation of theme accents:• Later L and H

• higher peak

Contrast affected rheme accent type• More falling than high rheme accents

Conclusion

Double contrast is realised differently for theme and rheme accents:• Phonological modification for rheme accents:

(more falling than high rheme accents in contrastive contexts)

• Phonetic modification in theme accents (later and higher peak, larger rise)

Regional influences

Atterer and Ladd’s findings of later peaks for Southerners replicated in one condition only (non-contrastive context, realized with a high rheme accent)

Same condition as Atterer and Ladd

Magnitude of H-alignment comparable to Atterer and Ladd

Regional differences ct’d

Differences between Northern and Southern German speakers small• No difference in accent types

• Difference in H-alignment and rise-excursion

Do dialectal differences persist?

Northern Germans mark contrastiveness more than Southern Germans do

For H-alignment dialectal differences become more pronounced in contrastive contexts

For rise-excursion, dialectal differences disappear when producing contrast

cnc

contrast

60.0

50.0

40.0

30.0

20.0

10.0

0.0

Mean a

l_L_C

0

south

north

region

nsns

ns ns

cnc

contrast

80.0

60.0

40.0

20.0

0.0

Mea

n a

l_H

_V1

rheme accent: falling

south

north

region

cnc

contrast

60.0

40.0

20.0

0.0M

ean a

l_H

_V1

rheme accent: high

south

north

region

cnc

contrast

6.0

5.0

4.0

3.0

2.0

1.0

0.0

Mea

n ris

e_st

south

north

region

ns ns

L-alignment H-alignment rise-excursion

Thank you for your attention