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Questions tagged [prosody]

The rhythm, stress and intonation of speech.

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To what extent can the prosody factors influence the literal meanings or not at all

My question is whether or not the prosody factors can change the literal meanings of the propositions. The pragmatics is not considered in this case. I would very much appreciate it if someone gives ...
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How Does Gibberish Differ between Languages?

Gibberish spoken by English-speakers, despite being intended to sound unruly, clearly has rules. I'm not a linguist, and can't find a great deal of research into this, but here's a paper linking the &...
Thomas Anton's user avatar
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Aren't all spoken languages tonal?

From my understanding, a tonal language is when a difference intonation of the word changes its meaning. Now: Italian for example (which I was told is not tonal) differentiates questions from ...
AGL's user avatar
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German contraction "wara" - morphology or phonology?

The regular form War er ... 'was he ...' would, in certain positions of sentence in my idiomatic sociolect, sound approximately as * wara /vaːʁɐ/. I can not imagine at the moment how this came ...
vectory's user avatar
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Scientific sources/ literature regarding (spanish) speech rate

I'm interested in scientific sources or literature regarding speech rate/ tempo of speech of the Spanish language. Do you know any? Specifically, I'm looking for sources that compare the speech rate ...
Olive's user avatar
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Is rising intonation (almost) universally associated with questions across languages, and why?

It seems that in most languages, rising intonation/prosody (towards the end of the sentence) is typically associated with questions. Thus: How prevalent is this practice, and are there major ...
J Li's user avatar
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Why is there (almost) no variety to the Hebrew accent in Israel?

Hebrew is my native language, and I grew up and spent most of my life in Israel. Unlike English, in Hebrew we don't have a variety of accents. In fact, generally all of the people in Israel have the ...
Michael Seltenreich's user avatar
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Why does IPA have stress in /ɡəˈʃtɔlt/ before instead of after the /ʃ/?

Why does IPA have stress here /ɡəˈʃtɔlt/ instead of here /ɡəʃˈtɔlt/?
Hey's user avatar
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Does pre-fortis clipping only operate within a syllable? If not, what is its actual scope?

English is known to have a phenomenon of "pre-fortis clipping": in certain contexts, vowel and sonorant phonemes before a fortis/voiceless consonant are realized with shorter duration than the same ...
brass tacks's user avatar
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Is there a dataset/list of rules mapping words in sentences to prosodic features?

I'm interested in building a toy text-to-speech system, where at the very least I want to decide when to include dynamic emphasis, slight pitch shift, and the duration and boundary between words. It ...
lightning's user avatar
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How are LH words assigned stress in Latin if we assume maximally bimoraic feet?

I recently came across a paper, "The Quantitative Trochee in Latin" (by R. Armin Mester, 1994) that seems to argue that feet in Latin were "strictly" bimoraic. The arguments that Mester gives for ...
brass tacks's user avatar
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Online collection of the world languages' melodic patterns?

Every language has some very typical melodic patterns and I've been wondering is there some sort of a global repository collecting and comparing such patterns?
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What’s a good example a language phenomena in which f0 is NOT correlated to pitch?

It’s standard doctrine that “pitch is perceived f0”, and that f0 is phonetic and corresponds to pitch which is phonological ... no problem there. (Even if this is a simplification) But I wonder if ...
Teusz's user avatar
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Sentence stress detection

I was looking for APIs for the detection of sentence stress, also known as prosodic stress, based on input audio. (Ideally, I was hoping for a library able to assess the level of prominence of a ...
Fabien Snauwaert's user avatar
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what is the (pan) linguistic term for "scare-quotes" intonation

I was thinking about the use of scare-quotes in English speech, not the physical gesture so much as the intonation and prosodic features as the word or phrase is used in an oral statement. What label ...
TimR's user avatar
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Do we have an Intonation "etymology"?

Recently I was thinking about a language I'm currently learning and its similarities with my own native language. While I assume grammar to change considerably depending on language it came to mind ...
armatita's user avatar
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Does the Klingon spoken in Star Trek: Discovery present a harsh/ventricular/pressed voice phonation?

The new Klingon dialogue sounds noticeably different, perhaps they could be using a sound filter or simply acting in a lower register; although Klingon character Voq's voice sounds particularly ...
lorelay's user avatar
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looking for corpus of dialogue recording in appointment between doctors and patients

I am looking for a public corpus of dialogue recording in short/medium appointment between doctors and patients, aims to study speech variation, the prosody of speech, measuring speech' rhythm, ...
Andy.Jian's user avatar
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2 answers
2k views

How does ghetto talk work in tonal languages?

Among historically low income/education groups in the US and in my native Mexico City, "ghetto talk" is heavy on the use of pitch to convey meaning. I've always attributed this to people compensating ...
suckrates's user avatar
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How can I remove the red dashed lines of the cursor in Praat?

I am writing a conference paper where I want to include the PRAAT analyses of some spoken sentences (I will use screenshots), but I cannot get rid of the red cursor lines. Is there a way to deactivate ...
Freya's user avatar
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Speech Recognition: prosody. What is the difference between combined and intergrated models?

I am readin a paper about dialogue modelling and the identification of dialogue acts using prosody. The paper describes 2, maybe three types of model for utilizing the speech signal: a separate, ...
Helen's user avatar
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Components that comprise a syllable

Is there a standard representation that combines onset, nucleus, coda with mora? That would help me visualize the prosodic hierarchy better, because I could put something beneath the syllable level. ...
Teusz's user avatar
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In what sense if f0 not an objective measurement?

I always assumed a dichotomy between f0 and pitch, such that the former is objective/physical whilst the latter is subjective/mental. Then, I was introduced to this presentation and article. ...
Teusz's user avatar
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Are there necessary and sufficient features for categorizing tone using only f0?

Imagine i gave you recordings of a few syllables in an unknown language, but told you that there are H and L tones in that language. In that case you could probably distinguish H from the L syllables ...
Teusz's user avatar
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How is "rising tone" the same in all tonal languages?

If we compare two unrelated languages with lexical tone, where both languages have the same number of tonal contrasts, are there any universals/tendencies regarding: the kinds of tonal contrasts (...
Teusz's user avatar
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graphical representation that exemplifies the different between stressed-timed and syllable-timed languages

A student asked why English and French have different rhythms. luckily, I had an answer on hand: English is a stressed-timed language - rhythmic beats align with stressed syllables French is a ...
Teusz's user avatar
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Considering basic intonation patterns, what is meant by "generation paths" in this excerpt?

In this description of intonation, the author claims that The pitch contours belonging to the same family are supposed to be manifestations of the same underlying “basic intonation pattern”. In ...
Teusz's user avatar
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How does Saussure understand prosodic aspects of language?

Did Saussure ever consider intonation/melody as part of parole and/or langue? I cannot find any indication of prosody in the "Course in General Linguistics", so maybe Saussure was concerned more with ...
Teusz's user avatar
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What's a simple example of natural classes of tone contours?

I recently learned (in this forum) that natural classes of tones are posited based on the tendency of members of those classes to act together (that is, I suppose, to have the same effect based on a ...
Teusz's user avatar
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Representing tone in feature matrices

I’m studying feature geometry in my intro to phono course, and we’re looking at tone. One topic which I have trouble getting my head around is the “tonal motivation” for autosegmental phonology; ...
Teusz's user avatar
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Can word stress always been seen in the signal as increased f0?

Of course stress is manifest in a variety of ways, not just increased f0, and f0 indicates much more than just stress - but is it accurate that stress always entails at least increased f0?
Teusz's user avatar
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How are prosodic phenomena represented in the phonological hierarchy?

Thanks to earlier questions (and some reading), I understand the basics of the phonological hierarchy Features < Root < Skeletal Slot < (mora / onset-rhyme-nucleus-coda) < Syllable &...
Teusz's user avatar
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Is it accurate to claim that autosegmental phonology is a theory of suprasegmental prosodic phenomena?

I'm a little unclear on what autosegmental phonology is vis-a-vis suprasegmentals. Although I understand the nuts-and-bolts of autosegmental phonology, it is not clear to me if it negates a division ...
Teusz's user avatar
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In what tonal language is tone uncontroversially suprasegmental and not segmental?

So, it recently came to my attention that Chinese tone is not necessary a suprasegmental feature like I assumed. It seems that some claim it can be analyzed as being subsegmental. If I am interested ...
Teusz's user avatar
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3 votes
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Prosodic vs Metrical vs Autosegmental accounts of suprasegmental phenomena

In the literature I see three different theoretical constructs used to account for prosodic phenomena: Prosodic phonology Metrical phonology Autosegmental phonology Likely there are a few others, ...
Teusz's user avatar
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2 votes
2 answers
402 views

Is vowel harmony prosodic, suprasegmental, or both?

I read that the division between suprasegments and segments is not black and white. I take this claim to have two logical entailments: There are prosodic features that are segmental. For example, ...
Teusz's user avatar
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1 vote
1 answer
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Why is the utterance and intonational phrase "post-lexical"?

In the right side of the image below, it is implied that constituents up to the level of the word are considered "postlexical" and those below it are "lexical". I can easily imagine that the prosodic ...
Teusz's user avatar
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What is a "vertical scale" in a discussion of intonation contours?

In Ladd, D. R., & Morton, R. (1997), the authors write: It is customary to think of an intonation contour as having a linguistically distinctive shape or pattern and an independently ...
Teusz's user avatar
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1 vote
1 answer
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Pitch movements in English

As each language can be said to have an "inventory" of pitch movements which are felicitous (?) or anyway possible, I wonder what sequences of pitch movements characterize English (but not e.g. French ...
Teusz's user avatar
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2 votes
1 answer
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How can listeners perceive male f0 on the telephone

So I know that F0 need not be present for pitch to perceived (at least for men!) because the telephone filters out frequencies <300Hz (at least in the 90s, maybe there have been innovations in the ...
Teusz's user avatar
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5 votes
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What is the phonetic difference between "White House" and "white house"?

I guess this is really a difference of stress (though I confess, as a non-native, I barely perceive it). Obama lives in the White House (white has primary stress?) I live in the white house on this ...
Teusz's user avatar
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1 vote
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What's the explanatory value of Metrical Trees?

What's the explanatory value of metrical trees used to account for prominence relations or syllable stress? At first reflection, it seems to me like rules should be sufficient (indeed, rules and trees ...
Teusz's user avatar
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2 votes
1 answer
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How are Tone and Intonation languages different acoustically?

On what aspects Tonal languages differ from Intonation languages when analyzing them acoustically? On intonation and tone: Jones (1960) - "the variations which take place in the pitch of the ...
Andrew Ravus's user avatar
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1 vote
2 answers
100 views

What is the philosophy of prosodic transcription?

Why are we transcribing prosody? and what is the philosophy behind it? In general what is the purpose of it?
Hidden Markov Model's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
189 views

How do we define foot in Mandarin Chinese?

As we known, foot is a stress-related unit. But in Mandarin, the existence of stress remains controversial, so I would like to know the formation of foot in Mandarin Chinese. Thanks.
Yaqian  Huang's user avatar
2 votes
2 answers
2k views

How to save the process of your work in PRAAT?

Is it possible to save the process of your project (not a result of it) in PRAAT programme so that you can change smth later etc and do not do the same things over again?
Apple Strudel's user avatar
3 votes
2 answers
267 views

What are the advantages of using ToBI for prosodic analysis?

I am a grad student who wants to compare the prosody of two of my classmates from different regions who speak different dialects of English. The obvious tool to use is ToBI, of course because it ...
Teusz's user avatar
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3 votes
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How is IPrA going to change the way we transcribe prosody?

There are some proposals for IPrA (International Prosodic Alphabet, similar to IPA but for prosody). The meeting for IPrA (link to UCLA webpage on the topic) is planning to be held in BU in mid 2016. ...
Andrew Ravus's user avatar
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1 answer
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Is there a common method of transcribing prosody?

I've seen diacritics corresponding to tones (in tonal languages), but asides from that I haven't come across a system for transcribing prosody in my studies. Is there a popular convention people use?
RECURSIVE FARTS's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
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Why don't we use frequency change in ToBI?

As we know the ToBI system is designed to transcribe prosody and within it you can transcribe only High and Low prosody changes. The question is here Why don't we implement frequency change and/or ...
Andrew Ravus's user avatar
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