We describe an experiment based on introspective assessment of inter-syllabic prosodic changes in two different conditions (global – continuous sentences, and local – two-syllable portions of speech), by means of discrete targets (Higher, Same and Lower). The results show that global evaluation is very problematic for the listeners and that f0 is the best assessed parameter, followed by intensi...

The effects of focus on F0 contours and syllable durations of spoken Cantonese are investigated through a controlled experiment involving all the disyllabic tone pairs. Regardless of the tones, syllable durations in the vicinity of the on-focus syllable are lengthened in systematically varying rates. For F0 pattern, two approaches are compared: analysis of surface features from time-normalized ...

Existing emotion recognition applications usually distinguish between a small number of emotions. However this set of so called basic emotions varies from one application to another depending on their according needs. In order to support such differing application needs an adaptable emotion model based on the fuzzy hypercube is presented. In addition to existing models it supports also the reco...

The aim of this study was to explore the prosodic characteristics of speakers with Parkinson’s disease (PD) in the marking of intonations. Twenty-four German PD speakers with either mild or moderate degree of dysarthria were compared with twelve non-dysarthric control speakers on the production of imperatives, questions and statements. Acoustic analyses of fundamental frequency (average F0, F0 ...

It has been claimed that segments are 'strongly' articulated in two prosodic positions: pitch-accented syllables [4, 5] and domaininitial positions [3, 6, 7, 9]. The current study examines the effect of these two prosodic conditions on resistance to vowel-to-vowel coarticulation, based on acoustic data. This study first shows that vowels are strongly articulated at the edges of prosodic domains...

The study concerns how prosody, including pauses, is used to give extra weight to focused words when repeated with successively more emphasis. The analysis is based on the same three-word phrase produced in two different communicative contexts, one a dialogue interaction and one a reading-aloud situation. Results show greater adjustments in the dialogue context. When emphasis was increased, the...

Finding words in sentences is made difficult by the absence of obvious acoustic markers at word boundaries, such as silent pauses. Adult speakers of a language are often assumed to rely heavily on direct identification of known lexical items (e.g. McClelland & Elman, 1986). This strategy is however not available to infants who have to first learn the lexicon of their language. Several types of ...

The prosodic features of a message are key factors in the transmission of information by radio. Some authors have demonstrated that perception and proper comprehension of radio news depend largely on the intonation, stress and speech rate used by the broadcaster. The aim of this study, therefore, is to determine the degrees of perception and recognition of information broadcast by radio when th...

This project investigates the relationship of vowel duration and coda duration in modern Welsh monosyllabic words ending in a simplex consonant. Acoustic data from 16 native speakers from the two major dialectal varieties of Welsh were analysed. We found vowel duration highly predictive by coda duration, taking into account possible influences of phrase prosody, speaker and variety specific dev...