Studying Intonation Julia Hirschberg CS 4706 9/21/2018

Today Approaches to studying contour meaning Questions people ask Does contour X convey a different meaning from contour Y? Is contour X used more often in context Z than contour Y Despite what people say/think, not all phenomena X are uttered with contour Y What kind of evidence could we get? Found data Laboratory experiments: production, perception Corpus collection 9/21/2018

What features can we look at and how do we obtain them? Intonation labeling by hand Acoustic/prosodic analysis by automatic methods Pitch tracking, pause detection, intensity, duration, speaking rate extraction Computational linguistic techniques to extract transcript-based (text) features Part-of-speech Sentence length, … What techniques do we use for analysis? Statistical methods (Splus, Matlab) Machine learning techniques 9/21/2018

Some Sample Approaches Natural Corpus: Hedberg & Sosa 2002 Introspective, observational: Wilson 1993, Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg 1990/2 Laboratory -- Production/Perception: Syrdal & Jilka 2004 Laboratory – Brain Imaging (e.g. fMRI): Doherty et al 9/21/2018

A Prescriptive Approach Statements fall and questions rise (Wilson 1993) 9/21/2018

Hedberg & Sosa 2002 Who saw John?/Who didn’t see John? Did John leave?/Didn’t John leave? How are yes-no and wh-questions uttered and how might we explain differences? Where is the nuclear stress? Where is the semantic ‘focus’? Are the ‘question words’ accented or not? Corpus 35 whq’s and 38 ynq’s from the McLaughlin Group and Washington Week 9/21/2018

Intonational labeling (ToBI) from pitch tracks Topic/focus coding Analysis Intonational labeling (ToBI) from pitch tracks Topic/focus coding Frequency distributions of features with question categories Results Wh-words (60%) and neg aux in negative ynq’s (89%) most often uttered with L+H* accent (‘contrastive’ accent) -- why? Aux in positive ynq’s often deaccented (41%) or realized with L* (17%) accent – why? 9/21/2018

Wh-q’s most often uttered with falling (80%) Conclusions: Ynq’s generally uttered w/ falling or level intonation, not rising (69%) Wh-q’s most often uttered with falling (80%) Conclusions: Locus of interrogation is accented in wh-q’s and in negative ynq’s to “signal interrogative status of sentence” – but not in positive ynq’s “due to need to highlight a following element” Why do ynq’s and wh-q’s sometimes rise and sometimes fall? 9/21/2018

Critique? Is this a good corpus for this investigation? What about the speakers? 9/21/2018

Syrdal & Jilka 2004 How are whq’s and ynq’s produced most naturally (for TTS)? Same hypothesis: whq’s fall and ynq’s rise in American English Different approach: production and perception studies Production: 8 (professional) speakers (5F, 3M) Read transcripts of actual dialogues 9/21/2018

Intonational (ToBI) labeling from pitch tracks of extracted questions Analysis: Intonational (ToBI) labeling from pitch tracks of extracted questions Results: Ynq’s rose in 83% of cases for females and 53% for males Wh-q’s always fell for females and fell 79% of time for male speakers Perception: acceptability judgments Forced choice, 12 listeners Stimuli: X 9/21/2018

Pairs of ynq and whq’s with same voice/different intonation 17 natural (9 ynq’s, 8 whq’s) 12 synthesized 12 subjects (6 and 6) Judgments: Ynq: Natural speech: people preferred standard rise (L* H- H%) Synthetic speech: no results Whq: Natural speech: people preferred falling contours (L- L%) to rising (H-H%) and slightly to ‘continuation rise’ (L- H%) Synthetic: no preference 9/21/2018

Critique How many questions were produced? Are professional speakers a good choice? Read vs. spontaneous speech? For TTS? Why no results for synthetic speech? 9/21/2018

Doherty et al 2004 How do people process intonation, e.g., in rising questions vs. falling statements vs. falling questions? Method: brain imaging (fMRI) Where is the ‘prosody’ portion of the brain? What other sectors is it ‘close’ to and what is their function? Do particular contours have particular locations? 9/21/2018

150 triples, of which each subjects heard only 1 version Procedure: 11 subjects (4M, 7F) 150 triples, of which each subjects heard only 1 version She was talking to her father? Was she talking to her father. She was talking to her father. Task: Monitoring: Is this a question or a statement? Results: Increase in activation when subjects made judgments about tokens w/ rising intonation but not falling Why? 9/21/2018

Semantic processing? No Acoustic processing? Maybe Interpreting the rising contour as a question? Check lesion studies to see if people with damage in these areas can interpret rising contours… 9/21/2018

Critique No rising inverted questions? “Was she talking to her father?” 9/21/2018

Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg ’90/’92 A compositional account of intonational meaning Method: intuition and observation Hypothesis: Contours convey relationships Between current, prior, and following utterances Between propositional content and mutual beliefs Contour meanings are composites of the meanings of their pitch accents, phrase accents and boundary tones 9/21/2018

Pitch Accent/Prominence in Pierrehumbert 1980 Which items are made intonationally prominent and how? Accent type: H* simple high (declarative) L* simple low (ynq) L*+H scooped, late rise (uncertainty/ incredulity) L+H* early rise to stress (contrastive focus) H+L* fall onto stress (implied familiarity) H*+L fall from a high stress (common downstepped contour) 9/21/2018

Downstepped accents: H*, L+H*, L*+H Degree of prominence: within a phrase: HiF0 across phrases 9/21/2018

Prosodic Phrasing in Pierrehumbert 1980 ‘Levels’ of phrasing: intermediate phrase: one or more pitch accents plus a phrase accent (H- or L- ) intonational phrase: 1 or more intermediate phrases + boundary tone (H% or L% ) 9/21/2018

L*+H L* H* H-H% H-L% L-H% L-L% 9/21/2018

H*+L H+L* L+H* H-H% H-L% L-H% L-L% 9/21/2018

Goal Explain how contours that share prosodic phenomena convey similar meanings, and how those that differ in phenomena, differ in meaning -- based on their intonational description H* L- L% vs. H* -H L% vs. H* H- H% I’m from Muskogee… L* H- H% vs. H* H- H% 9/21/2018

Pitch Accents Convey information status about discourse references, modifiers, predicates and their relationship to S and H’s mutual beliefs H*: X is new and predicated My name is H* Mark H* Liberman H-H% L*: X is salient but not part of the speaker’s predication …L* Stalin was L* right H-H% H*+L: X is inferable from S and H’s mutual beliefs and part of the predication H*+L Don’t H*+L forget to H*+L take your H* lunch L-L% 9/21/2018

L*+H: X is part of a scale but not part of the predication H+L* (H+!H*): X is inferable from S and H’s mutual beliefs but not part of predication She’s H+L* teething L-L% L*+H: X is part of a scale but not part of the predication …I fed the L*+H goldfish L-H% L+H*: X is part of a scale and in S and H’s mutual beliefs (narrow focus) I don’t L+H* want L+H* shrimp L-H% I want L+H* lobster L-L% 9/21/2018

Phrase Accents Convey relationships among intermediate phrases, such as which form part of larger interpretive units L-: X L- Y means X and Y are interpreted separately from one another Do you want a sandwich L- or would you like a soda H-: X H- Y means X and Y should be interpreted together Do you want apple juice H- or orange juice 9/21/2018

Boundary Tones Signal the directionality of interpretation of intonational phrases H%: X H% Y means interpret X wrt Y You made seven errors L-H% What a shame L-L% We don’t have time to continue today. L%: X L% Y means no directionality of interpretation suggested You made seven errors L-L% What a shame L-H% 9/21/2018

Unresolved Questions How do the meanings of pitch accents in a single phrase combine? The L* blackboard’s painted H* orange L-L% How do we distinguish the meaning of a phrase accent from that of a boundary tone – especially in intonational phrases with a single intermediate phrase? E.g. H* H-L% (plateau) vs. H* H-H% (high-rise question) vs. H* L-L% (declarative) Is this framework useful for investigating contour meaning? E.g. downstepped contours, H+L* 9/21/2018

Critique What is the evidence? Where might we get it? 9/21/2018

Next Class Read about Text-to-Speech systems 9/21/2018