Musical Speech: A New Methodology for Transcribing Speech Prosody

Musical Speech is a new methodology for transcribing speech prosody using musical notation. The methodology presented in this paper is an updated version of our work [12]. Our work is situated in a historical context with a brief survey of the literature of speech melodies, in which we highlight the pioneering works of John Steele, Leoš Janáček, Engelbert Humperdinck, and Arnold Schoenberg, followed by a linguistic view of musical notation in the analysis of speech. Finally, we present the current state-of-the-art of our innovative methodology that uses a quarter-tone scale for transcribing speech, and shows some initial results of the application of this methodology to prosodic transcription.