1. Intonational and Its Meanings
Julia Hirschberg
CS 6998
11/10/2018

2. Today ToBI intonational framework Spoken language and interpretations
Phrasing
Accent
Contours
Pitch Range
Amplitude and timing
11/10/2018

3. To(nes and)B(reak)I(ndices)
Developed by prosody researchers in four meetings over
Goals:
devise common labeling scheme for Standard American English that is robust and reliable
promote collection of large, prosodically labeled, shareable corpora
ToBI standards also proposed for Japanese, German, Italian, Spanish, British and Australian English,....
11/10/2018

4. Minimal ToBI transcription: recording of speech f0 contour ToBI tiers:
orthographic tier: words
break-index tier: degrees of junction (Price et al ‘89)
tonal tier: pitch accents, phrase accents, boundary tones (Pierrehumbert ‘80)
miscellaneous tier: disfluencies, non-speech sounds, etc.
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5. Sample ToBI Labeling
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6. Online training material,available at:
Evaluation
Good inter-labeler reliability for expert and naive labelers: 88% agreement on presence/absence of tonal category, 81% agreement on category label, 91% agreement on break indices to within 1 level (Silverman et al. ‘92,Pitrelli et al ‘94)
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7. Pitch Accent/Prominence in ToBI
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+!H* fall onto stress (implied familiarity)
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8. Downstepped accents: !H*, L+!H*, L*+!H Degree of prominence:
within a phrase: HiF0
across phrases
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9. Functions of Pitch Accent
Given/new information
S: Do you need a return ticket.
U: No, thanks, I don’t need a return.
Contrast (narrow focus)
U: No, thanks, I don’t need a RETURN…. (I need a time schedule, receipt,…)
Disambiguation of discourse markers
S: Now let me get you the train information.
U: Okay (thanks) vs. Okay….(but I really want…)
11/10/2018

10. Prosodic Phrasing in ToBI
‘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% )
ToBI break-index tier
0 no word boundary
1 word boundary
2 strong juncture with no tonal markings
3 intermediate phrase boundary
4 intonational phrase boundary
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11. Functions of Phrasing
Disambiguates syntactic constructions, e.g. PP attachment:
S: You should buy the ticket with the discount coupon.
Disambiguates scope ambiguities, e.g. Negation:
S: You aren’t booked through Rome because of the fare.
Or modifier scope:
S: This fare is restricted to retired politicians and civil servants.
11/10/2018

12. L*+H L* H*
H-H%
H-L%
L-H%
L-L%
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13. H* !H*
H+!H*
L+H*
H-H%
H-L%
L-H%
L-L%
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14. Contour Examples
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15. Contours: Accent + Phrasing
What do intonational contours ‘mean’ (Ladd ‘80, Bolinger ‘89)?
Speech acts (statements, questions, requests)
S: That’ll be credit card? (L* H- H%)
Propositional attitude (uncertainty, incredulity)
S: You’d like an evening flight. (L*+H L- H%)
Speaker affect (anger, happiness, love)
U: I said four SEVEN one! (L+H* L- L%)
“Personality”
S: Welcome to the Sunshine Travel System.
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16. Propositional attitude (uncertainty) Did you feed the animals?
I fed the L*+H goldfish L-H%
Distinguish direct/indirect speech acts
Can you open the door?
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17. But these approaches are limited….
Don’t capture generalizations across similar tunes
Aren’t predictive/explanatory: why does this contour convey what it does?
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18. And Other Things Contribute: Pitch Range and Timing (Rate, Pause)
Level of speaker engagement
Hello vs. HELLO
Contour interpretation
Rise/fall/rise (L*+H L-H%): Elephantiasis isn’t incurable
Discourse/topic structure: paratones
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19. How Do We Study Meaning? Lab experiments Corpus-based studies
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20. Next Week Read handout/ suggested readings on speech analysis
Identify ~3 topic areas for possible class projects
Turn in a ranked list of 3 classes you’d like to help lead
11/10/2018