1. Studying Intonation
Julia Hirschberg
CS 4706
9/21/2018

2. 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
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3. 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
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4. 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
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5. A Prescriptive Approach
Statements fall and questions rise (Wilson 1993)
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6. 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

7. 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?
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8. 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?
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9. Critique? Is this a good corpus for this investigation?
What about the speakers?
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10. 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
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11. 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
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12. 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
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13. Critique How many questions were produced?
Are professional speakers a good choice?
Read vs. spontaneous speech? For TTS?
Why no results for synthetic speech?
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14. 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?
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15. 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?
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16. 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…
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17. Critique
No rising inverted questions? “Was she talking to her father?”
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18. 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
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19. 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)
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20. Downstepped accents: H*, L+H*, L*+H Degree of prominence:
within a phrase: HiF0
across phrases
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21. 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% )
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22. L*+H L* H*
H-H%
H-L%
L-H%
L-L%
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23. H*+L
H+L*
L+H*
H-H%
H-L%
L-H%
L-L%
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24. 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%
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25. 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%
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26. 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%
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27. 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
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28. 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%
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29. 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

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

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