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Prosody

prosody = suprasegmentals

• occur simultaneously with Vs & Cs • extend over syllables, words, larger units

Prosody

in English:

lexical stressrhythm

intonation

in other languages:

lexical tone…

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Syllables

Native speakers share some intuitions about syllables

esp. counting syllables

bug 1water 2telephone 3elevation 4university 5

BUT:

what about fire, mild, mirror (1 or 2?)

Syllables

no satisfactory phonetic definition of a syllable

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Syllables

one proposal = sonority hierarchy

syllable consists of a sonority peak at its nucleus

starting from the left, the syllable “rises” in sonority; to the right, it falls

“SonorityHierarchy”

vowels (mostopen;greatestsonority)

approximants

nasals

fricatives

plosives (leastopen;leastsonority)

crustpeak

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Segment Relative Ampl. Segment Relative Ampl.

ɑ 26 n 15

ʌ 26 dʒ 13

æ 25 ʒ 13

ʊ 24 z 12

e 23 s 12

ɪ 22 t 11

u 22 g 11

i 22 k 11

w 21 v 10

ɹ 20 ð 10

j 20 b 8

l 20 d 8

ʃ 19 p 7

ŋ 18 f 7

m 17 θ 0

tʃ 16

“SonorityHierarchy”

manyviolationsinEnglishandcross-linguistically

spɹsplspjskɹsklskwskjstɹstj

sonorityadvocatesarguethatthesecanbe“handled”throughapplicationoftheoreticalprinciplescriticsarguethatthesonorityhierarchyisnotwell-motivatedtobeginwith

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“SonorityHierarchy”:critics

Ohala (1992,CLS)sonority:notempiricallydefinedsyllable:notempiricallydefined

“sonority”isnotanexplanation;it’sjustadescription(andnotaverygoodoneatthat!)

Reetz &Jongman (alsoskeptical)

bestunderstoodasadescriptionofabroadtendency

Syllables

no satisfactory phonetic definition of a syllable

ALSO:

no clear phonetic basis for determining syllable boundaries

WHY?

syllable boundaries do not appear in waveforms, spectrograms or other displays

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Syllables

bacon

/ˡbeɪ.kən/ or /ˡbeɪk.ən/?

How do we know which is right?

Syllables

athlete

/ˡæ.θlit/ or /ˡæθ.lit/?

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Syllables

bacon

/ˡbeɪ.kən/ or /ˡbeɪk.ən/?

Might propose “principles” for syllable division

e.g., “Maximum onset principle:”

==> assign Cs to onsets whenever possible

/k/ is the “onset” of the second syllable

Syllables

athlete

/ˡæ.θlit/ or /ˡæθ.lit/?

perhapsthisone,becausenowordsstartwith/θl/

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Syllables

But how do we know that our principles are right?(and what do we mean by “right”?)

Syllables

But how do we know that our principles are right?

Our best bet:

Empirical evidencepsycholinguistic experiments that test people’s intuitions

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Syllables

At best, evidence suggests certain tendencies about syllable structures in particular languages

HOWEVER, two speakers of the same language may still have different perceptions

Syllables

syllable = best understood as an intuitive notion that as yet “eludes scientific definition”

it remains unclear what (if any) aspects of syllables are “universal”

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Hierarchical structure of syllables

One view is that syllables have hierarchical components

nucleus, onset, coda, rime

Hierarchicalstructureofsyllables

nucleus=mostbasiccomponent,generallyaVotherpartsare“optional”

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Hierarchicalstructureofsyllables inEnglish

Hierarchicalstructureofsyllables

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English: onset-rime structure

onset

rime: nucleus + coda

Korean: body-coda structure

body: onset+nucleus

coda

(Derwing, Yoon, & Cho, 1993)

English prosody

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Stress in English

Stress refers to the prominence of particular syllables.

primary: [ˈɹɛ.kɚd] [ɹə.ˈkʰɔɹd]

secondary: [ˈfo.ɾə.ˌgɹæf]

tertiary: status is very doubtful

unstressed: [ɹə] in [ɹə.ˈkʰɔɹd]

Stress in English

trochee (trochaic pattern): primary + unstressed, e.g., ‘kitten,’ ‘water’

iamb (iambic pattern): unstressed + primary, e.g., ‘today,’ ‘adore’

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Acoustic correlates of stress in English

Property In [+stress]

F0 typically higher

duration typically longer

intensity typically higher

formant frequencies typically less “neutral”

NB:Notallcorrelatesarenecessarilypresentina[+stress]syllable.

Intensitycontour

Pitchcontour

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English unstressed vowels

typically reduced to /ə/ or /ɪ/

∴ formant frequencies are more /ə/-like

Perceptual research (English synthetic speech)

F0 and duration are more potent cues to stress than is intensity.

(not true in many other languages)

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Rhythm in English

What are the basic rhythmic units?

syllables?

Not likely for English, since syllables vary greatly in “weight”

The metrical foot?

defined as a stressed syllable TOGETHER WITH all the unstressed syllables after it

cat 1 footteacher 1 footanimal 1 footescalator 2 feet (1 primary stress; 1 secondary stress)

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Rhythm

English: stresses and unstresses tend to alternate:

The cows ate the grass. (content units.)

ə ə ə ɪ əThe cows have been eating the grass.

aʊ i æ

Rhythm

Different languages sound rhythmically different

e.g., English (morse code) vs French (machine-gun)

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Rhythmic classification of languages (Pike, 1945):

PROPOSAL: Isochrony

stress-timed (e.g., English, Czech)

• stressed syllables alternate with unstressed syllables• feet are isochronous, regardless of the number of syllables

isochrony = equal time

Rhythmic classification of languages (Pike, 1945)

stress-timed (e.g., English, Czech)

• stressed syllables alternate with unstressed syllables• feet are isochronous, regardless of the number of syllables

syllable-timed (e.g., French, Spanish)• syllables are isochronous

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Rhythmic classification of languages (Pike, 1945)

These conceptions of rhythm were accepted for a very long time because languages of these two categories clearly sound rhythmically different.

Q: BUT what does the research show?

What does the research show?

Approach:

measure durations of feet and syllables from waveforms in search of isochrony.

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What does the research show?

studies of stress-timed languages do not support the existence of isochrony of feet

studies of syllable-timed languages do not indicate true isochrony of syllables

So why do these two language categories sound different?

So why to these two language categories sound different?

1. In stress-timed languages ==> greater duration difference between stressed and unstressed syllables

2. Stress and syllable-timed languages, there are differences in

%V (% vocalic intervals)ΔC (variability in consonant intervals)

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“stress-timed”

“syllable-timed”

?

Rhythmic classification of languages

stress-timed (e.g., English, Czech)syllable-timed (e.g., French, Spanish)

mora-timed (Japanese)

mora (pl. morae): in Japanese a CV, a coda consonant, or the second half of a long vowel

te = hand 1 moraten = point 2 moraekii = key 2 morae

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Rhythmic classification of languages

stress-timed (e.g., English, Czech)syllable-timed (e.g., French, Spanish)mora-timed (Japanese)

Concl:

these categories seem to have some validity, but not because of isochrony

Length

segmental durations:

V and C durations are phonemic in some languages

English vowel duration DOES vary, and

Speakers can perceive differences greater than 1 JND (just noticeable difference)

1 JND for duration ≈ 25 ms

(Note: there are also JNDs for pitch)

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Length

phrase final lengthening:

a tendency in English for syllables to be longer at the end of phrases than in other positions

Length

speaking rate affects segment and syllable durations

length is perceived in relative rather than absolute terms

‘long’ means ‘comparatively long’

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How should we measure speaking tempo?

Tempo = an indication of fluency.

Should we use:

𝑻𝒆𝒎𝒑𝒐 = 𝒏𝒖𝒎𝒃𝒆𝒓𝒐𝒇𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒅𝒔𝒖𝒕𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒆𝒅

𝒕𝒐𝒕𝒂𝒍𝒔𝒑𝒆𝒂𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒆

gives words/s or wps.

è Unsatisfactory because English words vary tremendously in length.

Speaking rate (SR)

# of syllables divided by total time = syll/s

𝑆𝑅 =#𝑠𝑦𝑙𝑙𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒

This is much more useful, but…

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Speaking rate

# of syllables divided by total time = syll/s

can be misleading because natural speech includes pauses

unfilled pause = silencefilled pause = um, er, eh,…

𝑆𝑅 =#𝑠𝑦𝑙𝑙𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒

Articulation rate (AR)

exclude pauses; divide # syllables by total non-pause time

𝐴𝑅 =#𝑠𝑦𝑙𝑙𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒𝑠

𝑆𝑝𝑒𝑎𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑇𝑖𝑚𝑒 − 𝑃𝑎𝑢𝑠𝑒𝑇𝐼𝑀𝐸

Typically AR > than SR, because pausing is not factored into AR.AR gives a better estimate of how quickly the phones are produced.

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Speaking rate variations have non-linear effects on segments

Generally: faster speech ≘ shorter segments

BUT not all segments are affected equally:

Vowels – very compressible (show large rate effects)

Fricatives, aspiration – somewhat compressible

Stop bursts – not compressible at all

Intonation: variation in F0 over phrases, longer utterances

Linguistic functions

conveys sentence structure (e.g. phrase boundaries)signals different utterance types (declarative vs interrogative)conveys contrastive meanings (emphasis on particular words)

Paralinguistic functions

may convey speaker attitude (excited, bored...)

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