TOBI, continued

January 24, 2017

The Master Plan1. Any questions about the DSP assignment?

2. Any questions about the course project?

3. Today--some lecture notes on:

• Multiple pitch accents within a phrase

• “Downstepping”

4. Finally:

• Work on the transcription of some new TOBI exercise files.

• http://www.uofclinguistics.org/441/TOBIlab2.html

TOBI, so far• English has pitch accents, which align with stressed

syllables in an utterance.

• We’ve seen two pitch accents:

1. H* : peak in F0

2. L* : trough in F0

• English also has boundary tones, which align with the ends of intonational phrases.

• There are also two of these:

1. H%

2. L%

• Boundary tones are not associated with a particular syllable.

Phrases• Intonation organizes utterances into phrases

• “chunks”

• Boundary tones mark the end of intonational phrases

• Intonational phrases are the largest phrases

• In the transcription of intonation, phrase boundaries are marked with Break Indices

• Hence, TOBI: Tones and Break Indices

• Break Indices are denoted by numbers

• 1 = break between words

• 4 = break between intonational phrases

Break Index Transcription

Tones: L* H%

Breaks: 1 1 1 4

Information• Note that there’s a tendency to accent new information in the discourse.

• 4 different patterns for 4 different contexts:

H*

H*: Manny came with Anna.

H*

H*: Manny came with Anna.

L*

L*: Manny came with Anna?

L*

L*: Manny came with Anna?

Question Formation• Note that not all questions end in L* H%.

• What’s the intonational difference between these two?

Did you see Bob?

L*H%

Where did you go?

H* L%

• The upsloping intonation only applies to yes/no questions.

• Also note: “Uptalk”

• = application of L* H% pattern to declarative sentences.

0 Level Boundaries• 0 level boundaries are marked wherever there is clear coarticulation across a word boundary

• Also for flaps across word boundaries, as in “got it”

0 1 1 4

There Can Be More Than One• Important: there can be more than one pitch accent within an intonational phrase.

• Check out the peach file.

H* L* H* L%

Downstepping• Successive H* accents tend to drift downward in F0 within an intonational phrase.

• = downdrift, or downstepping

• This provides further evidence for phrasal organization.

• Note: this is an optional process.

• Downstepped H* accents are denoted with a !H*

• Anna gave Manny a mango.

H* !H* !H* L%

• There’s a lovely, yellowish, old one.

H* !H* !H* L%

Downstepping Pitch Track

H* !H* !H* L%

=271 Hz =238 Hz =200 Hz