1 The Effect of Pitch Span on the Alignment of Intonational Peaks and Plateaux Rachael-Anne Knight University of Cambridge

2 What is Alignment? Precisely when in time do certain F0 events take place in relation to the segmental string Measured in relation to some tone bearing unit Vowel Syllable Foot

3 What Do We Know About Peak Alignment ? Segmental Onset/coda type Intrinsic vowel length Structural Word boundaries Number of following syllables Nonstructural Tempo Pitch span

4 What Is Pitch Span? Pitch span is the difference between high and low targets in the speaker’s range The linguistic correlate is emotional involvement Expanded Normal Compressed

5 How Does Peak Alignment Change With Pitch Span? Peaks move later in the syllable when the pitch span is wider This a feature when syllables are lengthened by non-structural means e.g. Slower tempo

6 What Are Intonational Plateaux? The H of H*L nuclear accent has been observed to appear as a flat stretch of contour rather than as a single point Plateau Peak

7 How Are Plateaux Defined? Plateaux are defined as being 4% down from any absolute peak in F0 4% is the range of perceptual equality Peak Plateau 4% range

8 The Experiment - Aim To look at the effect of pitch span on the plateau’s Alignment Duration

9 Duration Hypothesis It is hypothesized that the plateau may be shorter in wider pitch spans As the speaker has to reach more extreme values there may be less time to realise a plateau

10 Alignment Hypothesis-A If the duration hypothesis is correct the two ends of the plateau may contract around the peak in more expanded spans This would lead to later alignment of the beginning and earlier alignment of the end of the plateau

11 Alignment Hypothesis - B Following data on peak alignment under changes in pitch span… The whole plateau may be later in expanded pitch ranges

12 Predicted Behaviour in Expanded Span Start of Plateau PeakEnd of Plateau Hypothesis A Hypothesis B Actual Results

13 Stimuli 2 all-sonorant utterances We were relying on a milliner A milliner?! In 3 pitch spans (compressed, normal, expanded) Recorded by one male and one female phonetician Combined to form conversational dyads

14 Procedure Subjects listened to the stimuli through headphones in a sound-treated room Instructed to produce an intonationally equivalent utterance in their own voice Imitation recorded onto a UNIX machine using a high quality microphone

15 Subjects 12 students at the University of Cambridge 8 women and 4 men Age range All with some phonetic training

16 Pitch SpanStart of PlateauPeakEnd of Plateau Plateau Duration Syllable Duration Foot Duration Low tone Measurements Taken

17 Statistics Repeated measures (MANOVA) Pitch span Sex Utterance

18 Initial Results The paradigm works – people really do use different pitch spans As they imitate increasingly wider spans: The peak gets higher The distance between the high and low points increases Syllables increase in duration

19 Results – Duration of the Plateau Plateau duration is significantly affected by pitch span It is shorter in the expanded than the neutral span and shorter in the neutral than the compressed The duration hypothesis is supported

20 Results- Peak Alignment Peak alignment is significantly affected by the pitch span The peak is significantly later in the syllable in an expanded pitch span Confirming previous studies

21 Results – Alignment of the Start of the Plateau Alignment of the beginning of the plateau is affected by pitch span It is later in the expanded span As predicted by either alignment hypothesis

22 Results – Alignment of the End of the Plateau The alignment of the end of the plateau is not significantly affected by the pitch span used It is consistently anchored This result was not predicted by either alignment hypothesis

23 Results – Alignment Summary Start of plateau is later in expanded pitch span Peak is later in expanded pitch span End of plateau is stable across pitch span

24 Predicted Behaviour in Expanded Span Start of Plateau PeakEnd of Plateau Hypothesis A Hypothesis B Actual Results

25 Conclusions The duration hypothesis was confirmed Neither alignment hypothesis was fully confirmed Instead, surprisingly (?) the end of the plateau is consistently anchored

26 Other Information About the End of the Plateau The end of the plateau is later in the syllable when the foot is polysyllabic The end of the plateau is earlier for some speakers when there is an upcoming word boundary

27 Implication End of the plateau is first place at which the listener can tell the speaker has started to fall Range of perceptual equality The end of the plateau is an important marker of linguistic structure Possibly more important than the peak itself