Thesis (doctoral)--Rijksuniversiteit te Utrecht, 1979. / Summary in Dutch. Includes bibliographical references (p. 161-167).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2003. / Title from first page of PDF file. Document formatted into pages; contains xxiv, 297 p. ; also includes graphics. Includes bibliographical references (p. 289-297).

Thesis (doctoral)--Rijksuniversiteit te Utrecht, 1979. / Summary in Dutch. Bibliography: p. 161-167.

This paper focuses on the prosody of spontaneous speech in specific field - service-oriented speech and non-service-oriented speech. It investigates the prosodic features of "service attitude utterances" and "neutral attitude utterances" in Mandarin Chinese. As study of spontaneous speech, the corpus is collected from service workplaces and two participated are included. Based on adjusted definition of prosody and intonation, this research examines the prosody factors of pitch range, mean pitch, tempo and involving accent of phrase. The research problem of this paper is to investigate prosodic patterns of service attitude utterances and neutral attitude utterances. The study defines the attitudes of "service attitude" to contrast with "neutral attitude", and classifies utterances according to prosodic structures into two types. Contrastive analyses include prosodic features of different attitudes speeches as well as of different prosodic structures. The conclusion of this study is pitch range and pitch scale both contributes to the expression of service attitude and they are not exclusive. Widening the pitch range and enlarging the pitch scale are realizations of service attitude utterances. Tempo and the accent of prosodic phrase show little relation to service attitude speech. 本文研究具體的語言場所一服務業和非服務業的自然話語的韻律特徵，考察漢語中“服務態度”和“中性態度”的韻律特點。作為自然話語研究，本文實驗的語料來自兩位發音人的其實工作場所。為了研究需要，本文重新定義了韻律和語調的關條，在此基礎上考察音域，平均基頻值，語速，以及韻律短語重音等韻律因素。 本文的研究問題是考察“服務態度”和“中性態度”兩種話語中的韻律特徵。為此，本文定義了自然話語中的“服務態度”和“中性態度”，並且將話語按照韻律結構分為兩組。文章涵蓋了兩種態度話語的韻律特徵對此，以及不同韻律結構問話語特徵的對比分析。 最終， 研究得出結論， 話語的音城和音階都有助於表達“服務態度”，兩者並不衝突，擴大音域和提高音階實現是“服務態度”表達的方式。同時發現，語速和韻律短語重音對表達“服務態度”沒有直接影響。

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This study is an examination of how prosodic pitch and intensity compare in autistic individuals and neurotypical individuals. Ten-minute recordings of casual conversation were taken and analyzed. Participants included 11 autistic individuals and 11 neurotypical individuals with six males and five females in each group. The Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule, 2nd Edition (ADOS-2; Lord et al., 2012) prosody rating scale was used to collect a perceptual evaluation of each participan's prosody, and Praat acoustic analysis software was used to collect measures of pitch and intensity over the 10-minute period to investigate how speech characteristics change with conversation partner familiarity. Results revealed significant prosodic differences between autistic and neurotypical individuals. Both mean speaking pitch and intensity were found to be lower in the autistic group compared to the neurotypical group. The ADOS-2 (2012) measure of prosody was found to be ineffective in accurately capturing all individuals in the study who were autistic. A more comprehensive rating scale was suggested in order to adequately identify autistic individuals according to their prosodic characteristics. Results showed significant differences across sex in pitch and intensity, with males having a lower mean speaking pitch than females, as was expected. Remarkable differences were also observed between autistic male speakers and neurotypical male speakers. A lower pitch variability and lower pitch range were discovered in the autistic male speakers compared to neurotypical male speakers. Male speakers demonstrated greater intensity variability than female speakers. No changes were found in pitch or intensity for either neurological group as conversation partner familiarity increased. This may have been due to the nature of the conversation, which was structured as an interview in a single session. The findings of this study have clinical implications and are hoped to be helpful in understanding prosodic features of autistic adults. This can lead to better assessment and treatment of autistic individuals, supporting them in their daily functioning and ability to form and maintain relationships.

Speakers break their otherwise continuous speech stream into meaningful segments, the edges of which are marked by audible cues such as pauses, rate changes and pitch movement. Prosodic boundaries, as these segment edges and the cues marking them are known, play a role critical to language processing and spoken language acquisition. While great progress has been made in quantifying the complicated range of acoustic cues that mark boundaries, little is understood about the cognitive processes by which these cues guide linguistic interpretation. Further, while prosodic boundary measures typically treat critical cues from pitch and timing independently, evidence suggests that pitch and timing are perceptually interdependent. In fact, pitch factors may at times distort perceived duration. This dissertation presents 3 pairs of perception experiments investigating pitch-­time interaction, including putative distortion of perceived duration from dynamic pitch and cross-‑silence pitch jumps (i.e., the kappa effect). Each pair uses the same set of stimuli, resynthesized with crossed continua of pitch and timing manipulations, in two different tasks: one psychoacoustic judgment of duration, and one of linguistic interpretation. Results suggest that perceptual interaction of major cues from timing (preboundary lengthening and pauses) and pitch (edge tones and reset) can be analyzed as reflecting gestalt-­like grouping principles (proximity, similarity and continuity) that have been shown to play a role in perceptual grouping in other cognitive domains, including vision and non-speech auditory perception. In addition to these potentially more cognitive­‐general principles, a new role is introduced for learned and potentially language-­specific patterns to prosodic grouping, in particular intonational schemas, i.e., recognizable cross-­phrase pitch patterns. Beyond this, results also support the hypothesis that perceived grouping is the driving force behind several types of pitch­based auditory illusions, including the auditory kappa effect. This dissertation offers insights into why prosodic boundaries are expressed with the particular pitch and timing cues that are common cross-­linguistically. While much language form is arbitrary, the expression of grouping by way of acoustic cues appears to be much less so. This research has potential toexplain the perceptual foundations of boundary cues, and therefore the cross-­linguistic similarities of prosodic grouping cues.

This study examines anticipatory pharyngealisation (i.e., emphasis) in Libyan Arabic, across a hierarchy of prosodic boundary levels (syllable vs. word vs. phonological phrase vs. intonation phrase ‘IP’) in order to quantify the magnitude, and identify the planned domain of anticipatory pharyngealisation. The acoustic manifestation of pharyngealisation is lowering in the second formant (F2) in pharyngealised contexts compared to their plain cognates. To investigate speech production models of how pharyngealisation is anticipated in advance, F2 measurements were taken at onset, mid and offset points of both vowels (V) in a word-final VCV sequence, in the context [VbV # Emphatic trigger]. The strength of [#], a prosodic boundary, was varied syntactically to manipulate the presumed hierarchical strength of that boundary from zero (where the VbV and the trigger are in the same word) up to an intonational phrase boundary. We expect that the stronger the boundary, the greater the resistance to the spread of pharyngealisation. The duration of the final vowel (i.e., the pre-trigger vowel) was also measured to assess if pharyngealisation magnitude on it and on the first vowel is influenced by the temporal proximity to the emphatic trigger. Results show (1) that within word boundaries pharyngealisation effects are present on both vowels, and (2) there are effects of pharyngealisation on the final vowel, i.e. the pre-trigger across word and phrase boundaries, and (3) there is no evidence of pharyngealisation across an IP boundary. An examination of the pre-trigger vowel + pause duration suggests that the lack of coarticulatory effects on the final vowel, i.e., pre-trigger vowel, across an IP boundary may be due to the temporal distance from the trigger: all tokens in this condition had a pre-trigger pause. For word and phrase boundary conditions, F2 was higher the greater the temporal distance from the pharyngealised trigger. These results suggest that anticipatory pharyngealisation is qualitatively different within the word as compared to across word boundaries. More clearly, the magnitude of pharyngealisation is categorical within word boundaries, and gradient across prosodic boundaries higher than the word. These findings suggest that pharyngealisation within the word is phonological, whereas across word boundaries it is primarily a phonetic process, conditioned by the temporal proximity to the pharyngealised trigger. Results also show that the planned domain of [pharyngealisation] is the word. However, additional phonetic pharyngealisation effects can extend across word boundaries as a result of coarticulation.

In this dissertation, I propose a model of the Lexicon in order to have a satisfactory account of interactions between morphology and phonology. The model is a modification of Lexical Prosodic Phonology introduced in Inkelas (1989). The main point of this study is that there are three types of morphological operations defined by the number of prosodic domains constructed corresponding to one morphological domain. (1) Three types of morphological operations: (a) One that constructs two new prosodic domains; (b) One that constructs one new prosodic domain; and (c) One that does not construct any new prosodic domain. The first two types are cyclic, while the third one is noncyclic. The three types of morphology are referred to as compounding, cyclic affixation, and noncyclic affixation, respectively. Interaction between morphology and phonology in Japanese verbs provides arguments for the three-way distinction of morphology. Some rules apply only in compounding; some other rules take effect only in cyclic affixation; some rules take effect in all three morphological processes. Nonapplication of rules is due to either their structural description or their nonstructural property. In the former case, the structural description of a cyclic rule is not satisfied because of prosodic representation. In the latter case, a cyclic rule does not apply, even if the structural description is satisfied, because the domain is noncyclic.

This work concerns how information structure is signalled prosodically in English, that is, how prosodic prominence and phrasing are used to indicate the salience and organisation of information in relation to a discourse model. It has been standardly held that information structure is primarily signalled by the distribution of pitch accents within syntax structure, as well as intonation event type. However, we argue that these claims underestimate the importance, and richness, of metrical prosodic structure and its role in signalling information structure. We advance a new theory, that information structure is a strong constraint on the mapping of words onto metrical prosodic structure. We show that focus (kontrast) aligns with nuclear prominence, while other accents are not usually directly 'meaningful'. Information units (theme/rheme) try to align with prosodic phrases. This mapping is probabilistic, so it is also influenced by lexical and syntactic effects, as well as rhythmical constraints and other features including emphasis. Rather than being directly signalled by the prosody, the likelihood of each information structure interpretation is mediated by all these properties. We demonstrate that this theory resolves problematic facts about accent distribution in earlier accounts and makes syntactic focus projection rules unnecessary. Previous theories have claimed that contrastive accents are marked by a categorically distinct accent type to other focal accents (e.g. L+H* v H*). We show this distinction in fact involves two separate semantic properties: contrastiveness and theme/rheme status. Contrastiveness is marked by increased prominence in general. Themes are distinguished from rhemes by relative prominence, i.e. the rheme kontrast aligns with nuclear prominence at the level of phrasing that includes both theme and rheme units. In a series of production and perception experiments, we directly test our theory against previous accounts, showing that the only consistent cue to the distinction between theme and rheme nuclear accents is relative pitch height. This height difference accords with our understanding of the marking of nuclear prominence: theme peaks are only lower than rheme peaks in rheme-theme order, consistent with post-nuclear lowering; in theme-rheme order, the last of equal peaks is perceived as nuclear. The rest of the thesis involves analysis of a portion of the Switchboard corpus which we have annotated with substantial new layers of semantic (kontrast) and prosodic features, which are described. This work is an essentially novel approach to testing discourse semantics theories in speech. Using multiple regression analysis, we demonstrate distributional properties of the corpus consistent with our claims. Plain and nuclear accents are best distinguished by phrasal features, showing the strong constraint of phrase structure on the perception of prominence. Nuclear accents can be reliably predicted by semantic/syntactic features, particularly kontrast, while other accents cannot. Plain accents can only be identified well by acoustic features, showing their appearance is linked to rhythmical and low-level semantic features. We further show that kontrast is not only more likely in nuclear position, but also if a word is more structurally or acoustically prominent than expected given its syntactic/information status properties. Consistent with our claim that nuclear accents are distinctive, we show that pre-, post- and nuclear accents have different acoustic profiles; and that the acoustic correlates of increased prominence vary by accent type, i.e. pre-nuclear or nuclear. Finally, we demonstrate the efficacy of our theory compared to previous accounts using examples from the corpus.