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The Effect of Pitch Span on Intonational Plateaux Rachael-Anne Knight University of Cambridge Speech Prosody 2002
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1 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
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2 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 4% range Plateau
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3 What Is Known About Plateaux – Segmental Factors When the onset of the accented syllable is a sonorant, plateaux : Are proportionally longer Begin earlier inside the syllable
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4 What Is Known About Plateaux – Structural Factors When there are more syllables in the foot Both the beginning and end of the plateau are aligned later in the syllable
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5 Summary of Factors Affecting Plateaux Realisation Segmental Onset/coda type Structural Number of syllables in the foot ? Extralinguistic Pitch span
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6 The Experiment - Aim To look at the effect of pitch span on the plateau’s Duration Alignment
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7 What Is Pitch Span? Pitch span is the difference between the highest and lowest targets in the utterance The (extra) linguistic correlate is emotional involvement Expanded Neutral Compressed
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8 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
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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
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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
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11 Alignment Hypothesis - B Following data on peak alignment under changes in pitch span… The whole plateau may be later in expanded pitch spans
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12 Predicted Behaviour in Expanded Span DurationStartPeakEnd Hypothesis A Hypothesis B Results
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13 Stimuli 2 all-sonorant utterances We were relying on a milliner A milliner?! In 3 pitch spans (compressed, neutral, expanded) Recorded by one male and one female phonetician Combined to form conversational dyads
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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
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15 Subjects 12 students at the University of Cambridge 8 women and 4 men Age range 21-27 All with some phonetic training
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16 Pitch SpanStart of PlateauPeakEnd of Plateau Plateau Duration Syllable Duration Foot Duration Low tone Measurements Taken
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17 Statistics Repeated measures (MANOVA) Pitch span Sex Utterance
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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
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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
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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
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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 both alignment hypotheses
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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
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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
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24 Observed Behaviour in Expanded Span DurationStartPeakEnd Hypothesis A Hypothesis B Results
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25 Conclusions The duration hypothesis was confirmed Neither alignment hypothesis was fully confirmed Instead, surprisingly (?) the end of the plateau is consistently anchored
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26 Implication I. Range of perceptual equality End of the plateau is first place at which the listener can tell the speaker has started to fall II. The end of the plateau covaries with foot structure Later in the syllable in polysyllabic feet The end of the plateau is an important marker of linguistic structure Possibly more important than the peak itself
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The Effect of Pitch Span on Intonational Plateaux Rachael-Anne Knight University of Cambridge Speech Prosody 2002
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