Research on prosodic structure, the underlying structure organising the prosodic grouping of spoken utterances, has shown that it consists of hierarchically organised prosodic constituents. The present thesis explores the nature of this constituency, in particular the question of whether prosodic structure is comprised of a given set of qualitatively distinct domains, or of a set of domains of the same type varying only gradiently in "strength", or a possible mixture of both types of relations across prosodic levels. This question is addressed by testing how prosodic constituency (mirrored on boundary strength manipulations) is signalled acoustically via pre- and post-boundary durations, intonation contours, and two sandhi processes, namely vowel hiatus resolution and post-nasal stop voicing in Modern Greek. Results show that the phonetic signalling of boundary strength provides support for a mixture of both differences of type and strength across prosodic levels, with some levels only differing in terms of their strength. Pre-boundary durations and resolution of vowel hiatus are gradiently affected by boundary strength with shorter to longer durations from lower to higher domains, and less instances of vowel deletion higher in the hierarchy. Post-nasal stop voicing is qualitatively affected by boundary strength with almost all voicing instances occurring in the lowest constituent of the structure in the way a qualitative view of prosodic constituency would predict, and in line with research on prosodic phonology. Finally, both the alignment and scaling of intonation contours at the edges of domains is found to distinguish qualitatively the lowest domain from the higher ones. All higher phrasal domains align with respect to the boundary and their peak scaling varies consistently gradiently across speakers. When combining those two findings, support is provided for the existence of differences of strength and type within the same process. Taken together the results from these four phenomena support the postulation of an underlying prosodic structure with a limited number of qualitatively distinct domains, within which at the same time some type of recursivity or structured variability must be allowed for. It is shown that there are structural properties of speech, like the length of the utterance, influencing the organisation of utterances in a principled gradient manner, supporting the existence of differences of strength within domain types. These findings bear significance for theories of prosodic structure that have assumed either the view of solely qualitative differences, or sole boundary strength differences, as well as for future proposals on prosodic constituency. Finally, the use of Modern Greek in this thesis adds to the existing literature on a language that has been extensively used by researchers working in views supporting the existence of qualitative distinctions of type across prosodic domains, and provides the first in depth experimental analysis of post-nasal stop voicing.

Aim : The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of simulated hearing loss on the acoustic contrasts between declarative questions and declarative statements and on the perception of speech intonation. A further purpose of the study was to investigate whether any such effects are universal or language specific. Method: Speakers included four native speakers of English and four native speakers of Mandarin and Taiwanese, with two female and two male adults in each group. Listeners included ten native English and ten native speakers of Mandarin and Taiwanese, with five female and five male adults in each group. All participants were aged between 19 and 55 years old. The speaker groups were asked to read a list of 28 phrases, with each phrase expressed as a declarative statement or a declarative question separately. These phrases were then filtered through six types of simulated hearing loss configurations, including three levels of temporal jittering for simulating a loss in neural synchrony, a high level of temporal jittering in combination with a high-pass or a low-pass filter that simulate falling and rising audiometric hearing loss configurations, and a vocoder processing procedure to simulate cochlear implant processing. A selection of acoustic measures was derived from the sentences and from some embedded vowels, including /i/, /a/, and /u/. The listener groups were asked to listen to the tokens in their native language and indicate if they heard a statement or a question. Results: The maximum fundamental frequency (F0) of the last syllable (MaxF0-last) and the maximum F0 of the remaining sentence segment (MaxF0-rest) were found to be consistently higher in declarative questions than in declarative statements. The percent jitter measure was found to worsen with simulated hearing loss as the level of temporal jittering increased. The vocoder-processed signals showed the highest percent jitter measure and the spread of spectral energy around the dominant pitch. Results from the perceptual data showed that participants in all three groups performed significantly worse with vocoder-processed tokens compared to the original tokens. Tokens with temporal jitter alone did not result in significantly worse perceptual results. Perceptual results from the Taiwanese group were significantly worse than the English group under the two filtered conditions. Mandarin listeners performed significantly worse with the neutral tone on the last syllable, and Taiwanese listeners performed significantly worse with the rising tone on the last syllable. Perception of male intonation was worse than female intonation with temporal jitter and high-pass filtering, and perception of female intonation was worse than male intonation with most temporal jittering conditions, including the temporal jitter and low-pass filtering condition. Conclusion: A rise in pitch for the whole sentence, as well as that in the final syllable, was identified as the main acoustic marker of declarative questions in all of the three languages tested. Perception of intonation was significantly reduced by vocoder processing, but not by temporal jitter alone. Under certain simulated hearing loss conditions, perception of intonation was found to be significantly affected by language, lexical tone, and speaker gender.

This thesis investigates the suprasegmental properties of Maori English and Pakeha English, the two main ethnolects of New Zealand English. Firstly, in a Production Experiment the speech of 36 New Zealenders is acoustically analysed. Using the Pairwise Variability Index (PVI) to measure syllabic rhythm, the study reveals that the two ethnic varieties display differing rhythmic patterns, with Maori English being significantly more syllable-timed than Pakeha English. It is also shown that, overall, Maori speakers use a higher percentage of High Rising Terminals than Pakeha speakers. The results relating to pitch suggest that Maori English pitch is becoming higher over time, with young Maori speakers producing a significantly higher mean pitch than young Pakeha speakers. Secondly, a Perception Experiment using 107 listeners is carried out to investigate the role of suprasegmental information in the identification of Maori English and Pakeha English. The ability of listeners to identify the two dialects based on prosodic cues only is tested in seven different speech conditions. The various conditions aim to isolate the precise suprasegmental features participants may use to identify speaker ethnicity. The results reveal that listeners are aware of the differing rhythmic properties of Maori English and Pakeha English, and are capable of tuning into the rhythmic characteristics of a speaker to use it as a cue in dialect identification, with some level of accuracy. The perceptual relevance of other prosodic cues is also discussed and the results indicate that, based on certain stereotypes, Maori English speech is assumed to be low-pitched, monotonous, hesitant and slow in pace. It is also shown that listeners who have had greater exposure to Maori English perform significantly better in a dialect identification task than those who are not integrated into Maori social networks, proving that the linguistic experience of the listener is a key indicator of his or her performance in ethnic dialect identification.

This dissertation presents a qualitative and quantitative analysis of aspects of the intonation and prosody of an Australian polysynthetic language, Bininj Gun-wok (BGW; also referred to as Mayali). The theoretical framework is autosegmental-metrical phonology, as adapted to the description of intonation by Pierrehumbert (1980); Bruce (1977) and others. The analysis focuses principally on two dialects, Kuninjku and Manyallaluk Mayali (MM), with some reference to the Kunwinjku, Kune, Gun-Djeihmi and Kundedjnjenghmi dialects.

Thesis (D.M.A.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2008. / Includes abstract. Vita. Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-05, Section: A, page: 1593. Adviser: Heinrich Taube. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 251-258) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

Thesis (M.M.)--University of North Texas, 2008. / First work for harpsichord; 2nd work for baroque cello and harpsichord continuo; 3rd work for tenor and baroque ensemble (trumpet, cello, timpani, organ and harpsichord). System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Includes bibliographical references (p. 48-50).

Proefschrift (Ph. D.)--Rijksuniversiteit te Leiden, 1983. / Vita. Text in English; foreword, summary and vita in Dutch. Includes bibliographical references (p. 145-153).

Proefschrift (Ph. D.)--Rijksuniversiteit te Leiden, 1983. / Vita. Text in English; foreword, summary and vita in Dutch. Includes bibliographical references (p. 145-153).

Thesis (M.S.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 2006. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 43-44).

University, Diss., 2004--Bonn. / Enth.: Bd. 1. Bd. 2. Bd. 3. Dateien im PDF-Format.