Prosody

Introduction to General Linguistics Chilin Shih

What Is Prosody?
From a robots point of view

Duration A playful R1D1 uses

random duration for each sound. A bored R1D1 uses fixed duration for each sound.

Pitch
A playful R1P1 uses random pitch for a sentence. A bored R1P1 uses monotone for a sentence.

R1I1 manipulates intensity. R1S1 manipulates spectral tilt

What Is Prosody?
From a humans point of view

Freberg (1950). You can convey a lot of information with prosody.

What can be conveyed? What are the acoustic cues?

Linguistic Use of Prosody

Duration
Long and short consonants and vowels Linguistic structure (longer at final positions) Paralinguistic information (mood, emotion)

Intonation
Lexical information (stress, accent, tone) Intonation type Paralinguistic information (mood, emotion) Discourse functions Other physiologically based effects

Lexical Information

Stress languages
English, Russian
Stress location is part of the lexical entry, but the pitch contour (accent type) on the stressed syllable may vary.

Accentual languages
Japanese, Korean, Swedish
The location of the accent is lexically marked. Accent type in a word is typically fixed.

Tone languages
Chinese, Navajo, Igbo
Lexically determined tone on every syllable or every word.

Stress: English

Fixed stress location: professor

Stress: English

Fixed stress location: professor

Different accent type in questions.

Stress: Russian

Fixed stress location: professor

May have different accent type than English even in declarative sentences

Accentual Languages: Japanese

Unaccented word:
Ume Lower and gradual f0 peak

Accented word:
Uni Higher and steep f0 peak

Pierrehumbert and Beckman (1988) Japanese Tone Structure. MIT press.

Chinese Lexical Tones

Tone shapes differentiate lexical meaning.

Ma1: mother
Ma2: hemp

Ma3: horse
Ma4: to scold

Chinese Sentences
Ma1-ma0 ma4 ma3. Mother scolds the horse.

Ma3 ma4 ma1-ma0. The horse scolds mother.

Intonation Types

English declarative
Final fall (H* L- L%) 9478-1509-7091

English question
Final rise (L* H- H%) 9478-1509-7091

Russian Intonation Types

Declarative
This is Neva.

Question
Is this Neva?

Russian Intonation Types

Declarative
This is Lena.

Question
Is this Lena?

Chinese Intonation Types

Chinese declarative
Li3bai4wu3 Luo2yan4 yao4 mai3 lu4. On Friday Luoyan wants to buy a deer.

Chinese question
Li3bai4wu3 Luo2yan4 yao4 mai3 lu4? On Friday Luoyan wants to buy a deer? Preserves lexical tone shapes. Question uses expanded pitch range near the end of the sentence (Yuan, Kochanski, Shih 2002).

Rhetorical Style:
Martin Luther King Jr.
I still have a dream.

Rhetorical Style:
Martin Luther King Jr.
It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

Rhetorical Style:
Martin Luther King Jr.
This nation will rise up, and live out the true meaning of its creed.

Prosody of Emotion

Different emotions, such as excitement, anger, suspicion, fear, sad, sarcasm, etc., have characteristic prosodic patterns.
Acoustic features may include f0 mean, f0 range, loudness, jitter, spectral tilt, and accent shape.

Prosody of Emotion

Excitement
Fast, very high pitch, loud

Hot anger
Fast, high pitch, strong, falling accent, loud

Fear
Jitter

Sarcasm
Prolonged accent, late peak

Sad
Slow, low pitch

Excitement
Marilyn won nine million dollars!

Dirty rats are the best, arent they?

Sad
Marilyn won nine million dollars.

Dirty rats are the best, arent they?

Sarcasm
Marilyn won nine million dollars.

Dirty rats are the best, arent they?

Discourse Functions
Topic initialization Discourse structure Phrasing Emphasis New vs. old information Other communicative means

Summary

Prosody encodes different information simultaneously.

Different signals, scopes and locations
Lexical tones vs. pitch range Local effect vs. global effect Strong beginning vs. strong ending

Modeling prosody requires the understanding of individual components and how they combine.