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Acting is a process of pretending to be someone who the actor is not. While acting is often considered to be a specialized skill of trained professionals, a simple and perhaps universal form of acting occurs during oral storytelling, in which the storyteller acts out the characters of the story during the moments of dialogue and self-reflection. In order to examine this skill experimentally, we had both trained actors and untrained novices read four fairy tales aloud. The stories contained a series of contrastive characters that spanned age, gender, and species. The major dependent variables were the vocal parameters of pitch height, loudness, timbre, and speech rate. The results demonstrated that participants created distinguishable acoustic profiles for each character within a story, regardless of the story’s familiarity. Monotonic trend analyses revealed the sequential changes in vocal parameters that were produced as a function of the age, gender, and species of the represented characters. Linear mixed-effects models showed a significant effect of acting training on character portrayal, with actors showing more-expansive pitch depictions than novices. We argue that portraying characters during storytelling is one of the most fundamental forms of acting in human life. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc) / Acting is a process of pretending to be someone who the actor is not. It is often thought of as a skill of trained professionals. We propose that oral storytelling is a form of everyday acting. When a storyteller reads aloud, they act out the characters of the story during moments of dialogue—when the characters themselves are speaking in the story. We explored the vocal portrayal of contrastive characters by both trained actors and non-actors as they read fairy tales aloud. The results revealed that participants, regardless of acting experience, portrayed the characters as predicted, performed the characters uniquely from each other, and remained consistent in their portrayal across a story. Actors were found to use a larger pitch range than non-actors, specifically for high-pitched characters. We argue that portraying characters during storytelling is one of the most fundamental forms of acting in human life.

This thesis investigates the relationship between prosody and formality in spoken Japanese, from the standpoints of both speech production and perception. The previous literature on this topic has often produced inconsistent or contradictory results (e.g. Loveday, 1981; Ofuka at al., 2000; Ito, 2001; Ito, 2002), and this thesis therefore seeks to address the research question of whether speakers and listeners use prosody in any predictable way when expressing or judging formality in spoken Japanese. Chapter 2 describes a pilot study which aimed to determine which prosodic variables were worth investigating in a larger corpus-based study. Speech of different levels of formality was elicited from subjects indirectly via the inclusion of indexical linguistic items in carrier sentences. Analysis of the relationship between mean f₀ and duration shows a significant correlation with the categories of formal and informal speech where both variables are higher in informal speech. Consequently, in Chapter 3 f₀ and articulation rate were analyzed in the corpus-based study. Corpus data for the study was collected via one-on-one conversations recorded at NINJAL in Tachikawa-shi, Japan. The speech data from the corpus was analyzed in order to test the hypothesis that the prosodic variables of mean f₀, articulation rate, and f₀ range would all be consistently higher in informal speech. Analysis using mixed effects models and a functional data analysis shows that all three prosodic variables are significantly higher in informal speech. These results were then used to inform the design of a speech perception study, which tested how manipulation of mean f₀, articulation rate, and f₀ range upwards or downwards affect listeners' judgments of de-lexicalized speech as formal or informal. Results show that manipulation of all three variables upwards or downward leads to listeners' judging recordings as more informal or formal respectively. However, manipulation of individual variables does not have a significant correlation with changes in listeners' judgements. This result led to the theory that categorization tasks in speech perception are probabilistic, with listeners accessing distributions of acoustic cues to the categories in order to make judgments. Chapter 5 of the thesis describes a probabilistic Bayesian model of formality formulated based on the theory of the cognitive process of category judgment described in Chapter 4, which attempts to predict a recording's level of formality based only on its prosody. Given information on the overall and speaker-specific distributions of the prosodic cues to the different levels of formality, the model is able to discriminate between categories at a rate better than chance (~63% accurate for formal speech, ~74% accurate for informal speech), performing better than human listeners - who could not predict formality based on only prosodic information at a rate above chance in the study in Chapter 4. The studies in this thesis show a consistent, significant relationship between prosody and formality in spoken Japanese in both speech production and perception, which can be modeled probabilistically using a Bayesian statistical framework.

Esta pesquisa teve como objetivo realizar uma análise da entoação de voz de pacientes com esquizofrenia para, a partir dessas variantes linguísticas examinar dados que caracterizem a prosódia como um possível indicativo diagnóstico. A esquizofrenia é uma doença mental grave sem sintomas patognomônicos, caracterizada por um misto de sinais e sintomas disformes. A prosódia afetiva é definida como o processamento e o reconhecimento de elementos emocionais e afetivos provindos das informações da entoação vocal. Pesquisas realizadas anteriormente apontam déficits singulares na verbalização das emoções contidas na fala desses pacientes, o seu discurso é considerado vago, com poucos ou quase nulos sinais emocionais entoacionais. Para a realização desta pesquisa, inicialmente, 16 clientes e frequentadores do Museu de Imagens do Inconsciente, uma das alas do hospital psiquiátrico Instituto Nise da Silveira (SEIs) e mais 16 pessoas sem transtorno mental que compuseram um grupo de controle (SCs), tiveram sua voz gravada em quatro etapas: entrevista de anamnese que segue um roteiro semiestruturado; relato empírico de experiências felizes e tristes; descrição de seus trabalhos artísticos; por fim, a leitura de um trecho de uma história infantil sem conotação afetiva. Na sequência, os mesmos procedimentos foram aplicados em usuários do CAPS II Espaço Vivo, um dos serviços de saúde mental que compõe o Centro de Atenção Integral à Saúde (CAIS) Prof. Cantídio Moura de Campos. A análise dos dados coletados foi possibilitada pela rotina ExProsodia (FERREIRA-NETTO, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2016), aplicativo elaborado para examinar automaticamente os elementos constituintes da prosódia. Através desses procedimentos foi possível identificar que houveram diferenças significativas nas variáveis acústicas da assimetria e dispersão do Tom Médio e da frequência fundamental (F0) nas etapas de fala espontânea e na leitura narrativa. Em especial, nessa última etapa, destaca-se o comportamento adverso da curtose de foco/ênfase que possibilitou a individualização dos grupos. Por fim, este trabalho de cunho quantitativo exploratório, corrobora a perspectiva de diferenciar pessoas acometidas pela esquizofrenia de sujeitos sem histórico anterior de transtornos psíquicos baseado na análise de parâmetros acústicos de voz. Em suma, tais apontamentos poderiam indicar pistas salutares para a constituição de um diagnóstico mais acurado para a esquizofrenia, assim como podem ser propriedades relevantes para colaborar para organização do tratamento individual. / This research aimed to perform an analysis of the patients voice intonation with schizophrenia to examine the data that characterize prosody as a possible diagnostic indication. Schizophrenia is a serious mental illness with no pathognomonic symptoms, characterized by a mix of misshapen signs and symptoms. The affective prosody is defined as the processing and recognition of emotional and affective elements from voice of the intonation. Previous studies point to singular deficits in the verbalization of the emotions contained in the speech of these patients, their discourse is considered vague, with few or almost no intonational emotional signals. In order to carry out this research, initially, 16 clients and visitors of the \"Museu de Imagens do Inconsciente\", one of the departament of the psychiatric hospital \"Instituto Nise da Silveira\" (SEIs) and 16 people without mental disorder who composed a control group (SCs) had their voice recorded in four stages: anamnesis interview that follows a semi-structured script; empirical report of happy and sad experiences; description of your artwork; finally, the reading of an excerpt from a children\'s story without affective connotation. Subsequently, the same procedures were applied to users of the \"CAPS II Espaço Vivo\", one of the mental health services that make up the \"Centro de Atenção Integral à Saúde (CAIS) Prof. Cantídio Moura de Campos \". The analysis of the collected data was made possible by the routine ExProsodia (FERREIRA-NETTO, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2016), an application designed to automatically examine the constituent elements of prosody. Through these procedures it was possible to identify that there were significant differences in the acoustic variables of the asymmetry and dispersion of both the Middle Tone and the fundamental frequency (F0) in the stages of spontaneous speech and narrative reading. In this last stage, we highlight the adverse behavior of the focus / emphasis kurtosis that allowed the individualization of the groups. Finally, this quantitative exploratory study corroborates the perspective of differentiating people affected by schizophrenia from subjects without previous history of psychic disorders based on the analysis of acoustic parameters of voice. In short, such notes could indicate salutary clues for the constitution of a more accurate diagnosis for schizophrenia, as well as they may be relevant properties to collaborate for the organization of individual treatment.

This dissertation constitutes the first attempt at describing the grammar of Wampis (Spanish: Huambisa), a language spoken in the Peruvian Amazon. Wampis belongs to the so-called Jivaroan family of languages and is closely related to sister languages Awajun, Shuar, Shiwiar and Achuar. The grammar introduces the Wampis people and some aspects of their culture and history before analyzing the major aspects of the language from a grammatical perspective. Wampis possesses a complex prosodic system that mixes features of tone and stress. Vowel elision processes pervade most morphophonological processes. Nasalization is also present and spreads rightward and leftward through continuants and vowels. Every word in Wampis needs at least one high tone, but more can occur in a word. Morphologically, Wampis is a very rich language. Nouns and especially verbs have very robust morphology. Affixes and enclitics contribute different meanings to words. Some morphemes codify semantic categories that are not grammatically codified in many other languages, such as sudden realization, apprehensive and mirative modalities. An outstanding feature of Wampis is the pattern of argument indexation on the verb, which follows an uncommon pattern in which the verb agrees with the object (and not with the subject) if the object is a Plural Speech Act participant. Parallel to this pattern of argument indexation is the typologically uncommon pattern of object marking in Wampis, whereby a third person object noun phrase is not marked as an object if the subject is a first plural, second singular or second plural person. Wampis exhibits a nominative-accusative alignment. All notional objects (direct, indirect, object of applicative) are treated identically in the syntax. The preferred order is A P V. Wampis also possesses a sophisticated system of participant tracking, which is instantiated in the grammar via switch-reference markers. Another typologically uncommon feature of Wampis is the presence of a sub-system of switch-reference markers that track a participant that is not a subject. Throughout the twenty-one chapters of this grammar, other issues of Wampis related to different areas of phonology, morphology and syntax are also addressed and described from a functional and a typological perspective.

A palavra morfofonológica este da língua espanhola é submetida a análise acústica no presente trabalho com o objetivo de verificar-se padrões prosódicos para seus diferentes usos: referencial (adjetivo/pronome) e metadiscursivo. Os valores dos parâmetros acústicos mensurados para a ocorrência de este referencial são comparados aos das ocorrências de este metadiscursivo com a finalidade de reconhecer-se uma subcategorização do uso metadiscursivo: filler e marcador discursivo. São utilizados dados de fala espontânea do espanhol do México, coletados no website YouTube. Verificamos que, do ponto de vista prosódico, as tendências de comportamento de este referencial metadiscursivo apresentam divergências ou convergências a depender da interpretação pragmática relacionada ao último uso. / The word este of Spanish is acoustically analyzed in the present work in order to verify prosodic patterns for its different uses: referential (adjective / pronoun) and metadiscoursive. The measured values of acoustic parameters for each type of occurrence are compared with the purpose of proposing two different classes inside metadiscoursive use: a filler and a discourse marker. We use spontaneous speech data from Mexican Spanish, collected on the YouTube website.From the prosodic point of view, the behavioral tendencies of metadiscursive and referential este have divergences or convergences depending on the pragmatic interpretation related to the last use.

O objetivo deste trabalho é determinar os limiares de diferenciação tonal (LDTs) do Português Brasileiro, no que se refere à entoação. LDTs são definidos como valores a partir dos quais a percepção de uma determinada grandeza passa a ser perceptualmente relevante. Consoni (2011) determinou que tais valores seriam de +3 e -4 semitons para palavras manipuladas em uma frase. Nosso objetivo é rever tais valores para o nível frasal. Nossa hipótese é a de que a extensão temporal afeta a percepção, graças ao efeito tau (SHIGENO, 1986). Para este fim foram aplicados dois experimento com 13 pares de uma mesma oração falada por uma voz masculina não-marcada. Os pares consistiam de uma sentença neutra (com tom zero) pareada à outras doze com F0 manipulados (6 semitons ascendentes e 6 semitons descendentes, a partir do zero), mais o par zero-zero. O primeiro teste possuía apenas duas alternativas sim e nãoe foi chamado de teste 2AFC, ao passo que no segundo havia três opções: sim, não e talvez, chamado de 3MFC. Aos participantes foi requisitado que respondessem se notavam ou não qualquer diferença entre os pares apresentados. Os testes foram aplicado em 16 pessoas. O teste3 MFC teve seus resultados desconsiderados, seus dados foram utilizados como um padrão qualitativo para o teste de nossa hipótese. A seguir foi aplicada uma ANOVA entre as variáveis do teste 2AFC a fim de se determinar se havia algum efeito, obtivemos um p < 0, 001, para n = 16, Fo > Fe. Para determinar os limiares de diferenciação tonal foi aplicada uma análise de componentes principais, a qual retornou como limiares os valores de -3 e +3 semitons. / The aim of this study is to determine the differential treshold of pitch (DTPs) for Brazilian Portuguese, with regard to intonation. DTPs are defined as values ??from which the perception of a certain greatness becomes perceptually relevant. Consoni et (2011) determined that such values ??would be of +3 and -4 semitones for manipulated words in a sentence. Our goal is to review these values ??from the phrasal level. Our hypothesis is that the temporal extension affects perception, due to the effect tau (SHIGENO, 1986). For this purpose two experiments were applied using 13 pairs of the same sentence, spoken by a male voice unmarked. The pairs consisted of a neutral setence (with zero tone) paired with the others twelve sentences with manipulated F0 (6 semitones ascending semitones and 6 descendants, from zero), plus the zero-zero pair. The first test had only two alternatives yes and no and was named 2AFC test, while the second one had three options: yes, no and maybe and was named 3MFC. Participants were asked to answer whether or not noticed any difference between the presented pairs. The tests were applied to 16 people. The results from 3MFC test were disregarded, the 3MFC data were used as a qualitative standard for testing our hypothesis. Following, ANOVA was applied in the 2AFC test in order to determine whether there was any effect, we obtained a p < 0.001 to n = 16, Fo > Fe. To determine the differential treshold of pitch was applied principal component analysis, which returned as threshold values ??of -3 and +3 semitones.