1. 1 Investigating Intonational Plateaux Rachael-Anne Knight, University of Cambridge rak34@cam.ac.uk What are Intonational Plateaux? Targets appear as flat stretches in the fundamental frequency (F0) contour… …rather than as single turning points The start (PON) and end (POF) are 4% down from the absolute peak (in Hz) following e.g. House et al 1999 PLATEAU POFPON ACCENTED SYLLABLE FOOT 123

2. 2 Syllable Structure Effects The location of the plateau varies with the onset type of the accented syllable…...and also with the coda type

3. 3 Foot Structure Effects The plateau is earlier in the foot when there are more syllables in the foot The plateau is earlier in the syllable in monosyllabic feet

4. 4 Word Boundary Effects The end of the plateau (POF) is earlier (in the foot) when there is an up- coming word boundary… …but only significantly so for women, men show no significant effect of word boundary!

5. 5 Pitch Range Effects The plateau is shorter in expanded ranges The beginning of the plateau (PON) occurs later in the foot but the end of the plateau (POF) is unaffected POF is relatively stable for each subject but varies substantially between subjects (accents?!)

6. 6 Conclusions Aspects of the plateau’s alignment co-vary with: Syllable structure (onset and coda type) Foot structure (number of syllables) Linguistic structure (word boundaries) Paralinguistic variables (pitch range) There are possible gender differences and accent differences Reference: House, J., Dancovicova, J. and Huckvale, M. (1999) “Intonational modelling in ProSynth”. Proc. XIV ICPhs Vol 3 2343-2346 University of California, Berkely, CA