The typology of tone and word-prosodic systems in general has been of longstanding interest to theorists and field workers alike. Unfortunately, much of the early typologizing dates from a time when we did not have adequate understanding of the full range of tonal phenomena across languages, e.g. African and Asian tone systems figured centrally in such typologizing, e.g. Pike’s (1948) famous di...

Composers often pick specific instruments to convey a given emotional tone in their music, partly due to their expressive possibilities, but also due to their timbres in specific registers and at given dynamic markings. Of interest to both music psychology and music informatics from a computational point of view is the relation between the acoustic properties that give rise to the timbre at a g...

This paper explicitly provides the experimental analyses for the fundamental arguments of Kyungsang (KS) tone. It provides the locations of the main accent in KS words and its basic tonal units. Furthermore through the results it ultimately contributes to the typological categorization of KS Korean tone. That is, the results of the current experimental analysis of the KS words provide us the ev...

The Naxi language has three level tones: H, M and L (plus a marginal Rising tone). The present study aims to offer phonetic insights into this simple system through examination of production data from three male speakers and one female speaker: realizations of the three level tones on CV syllables, under two reading conditions, labelled as ‘CAREFUL’ and ‘IMPATIENT’. Fundamental frequency (F0), ...

This paper deals with the question whether automatic and non-automatic downstep are distinct processes or can be regarded as the same phenomenon. Downstep is seen as a lowering of the pitch register, relatively to which tones are scaled. The distinction between the two types of downstep arises from differences in their tonal surface structure: In the case of automatic downstep a L(ow) tone inte...

Previous studies have reported phonetic characteristics of the Shanghai Chinese phonological voicing contrast, which cooccurs with a tonal contrast. In stressed word-initial position, phonetic voicing is neutralized and replaced with a tonal register contrast: high ‘yin’ tones for (phonologically) voiceless and low ‘yang’ tones for voiced obstruents. Furthermore, breathy vs. modal voice quality...

While the tones of Mandarin are conveyed mainly by the F0 contour, they also differ consistently in duration and in amplitude contour. The contribution of these factors was examined by using signal-correlated noise stimuli, in which natural speech is manipulated so that it has no F0 or formant structure but retains its original amplitude contour and duration. Tones 2, 3 and 4 were perceptible f...

After an overview of some recent work on prosodic typology, both tonal and rhythmic, it is argued that both symbolic and numeric computational methods are required in order to advance the field by using large annotated resources and developing consistent, precise and evaluable models. Symbolic modelling is illustrated with reference to the lexical and grammatical tone systems of West African la...

According to Hirano, Kurita and Nakashima (1983) the vocal fold structure changes continuously from earliest childhood to late adolescence. During pubert), the elastic fibers are differentiated from the deeper collagenous fibers. These changes can be assumed to affect the vocal register function. The pitches at which register transitions occurred were identified perceptually in recordings of 15...

The present study examined the link between affect and auditory stimuli in three parts. The first sought to determine the affective norms for the auditory stimuli. The second assessed the influence of a musical note’s register on the evaluation of a positive or negative word, while the third assessed the influence of harmonic musical intervals. Participants were simultaneously presented with au...