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Stringed instruments are known to be flexible regarding intonation. This suppleness is arguably at the root of the many discussions concerning tuning and intonation that have taken place in the past. Historical authors have, depending on the era, advocated for the use of just intonation, as well as tempered and Pythagorean, thus deepening the controversy regarding this issue. Similarly, contemporary studies on intonation in the realm of stringed instruments have reached a variety of conclusions, despite observing an apparent adherence to the Pythagorean system and, to a lesser extent, equal temperament. Given this discussion, this paper explored to what extent performances of 53 violin students conform to equal temperament (ET), as well as to what extent alignment or misalignment to ET is a product of chance. In addition, we asked whether the direction of an interval has an impact on its size, as well as whether there is any association between the sizes of different ascending and descending intervals. We also asked whether the academic year of participants had any impact of the size of intervals. Results suggest that the intonation of participants does not match ET, and that differences in interval size regarding ET occur for reasons other than chance; namely, in the case of ascending and descending minor seconds, descending major seconds, descending augmented seconds, ascending and descending minor thirds, descending major thirds, and descending diminished fourths. Furthermore, results not only show that interval direction may have an impact on interval size, but also that there is association between sizes of different intervals. The academic year of participants seemed to have an impact on ascending minor thirds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prosodic aspects of cross-linguistic contact are under-researched, especially past contact that has subsequently ceased. In this paper, we investigate declarative and polar question tunes of contemporary Cretan Greek, a regional variety of Greek whose speakers were in contact with Venetian speakers during the four and half centuries of Venetian rule on the island, from 1204 to 1669. The F0 contours of the Cretan tunes and alignment of peaks and troughs of interest with the nuclear vowel are compared to the corresponding tunes in Venetian dialect and Venetian Italian and to those in Athenian (Standard) Greek, which are used as control. The data (1610 declarative utterances and 698 polar questions) were drawn from natural speech corpora based on pragmatic criteria: broad focus for declaratives, broad focus, and information-seeking interpretation for polar questions. The pitch contour shapes of the tunes are modeled using polynomial basis functions, and the F0 alignment points are determined analytically. The results show the robustness of contact effects almost three and a half centuries after regular contact ceased and indicate that the shapes of the F0 contours of Cretan and Venetian declarative and polar question tunes are similar. In addition, Cretan alignment patterns are similar to Venetian and significantly different from Athenian. Insights are gained from research into how long prosodic characteristics may persist in a recipient language—decades or even centuries after the cessation of contact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work proposes a deep learning-based note detection model to assist and evaluate students during the piano teaching and training for intonation. Traditional musical note recognition algorithms are based on either time or frequency domain analysis. These methods are inadequate for analyzing signals with time-varying frequency content as they are vulnerable to noise, have high algorithm complexity and require considerable calculation for preprocessing or feature extraction during intonation. Therefore, this paper used constant Q transform (CQT) for preprocessing and feature extraction, which performs both time and frequency domain analysis. MobileNet, which is a lightweight deep CNN model for mobile apps, is used in this paper. MobileNet's deep separable convolution structure can satisfy the demands of both performance and inference speed required for preprocessing and feature extraction. First, spectrograms were created from the piano music signals using a constant Q transform, and potential note onset times were identified for players' intonation. The spectrogram regions centered at these onset times were then fed into a deep separable convolutional neural network, which generated a vector of probabilities for 88 notes. Finally, this paper performed different experiments by observing the effects of varying slice lengths and data overlap settings to improve the performance of deep learning architecture. Precision, Recall and F1-score are used to assess the performance of model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I examine the properties of a construction in Korean speech that has not received much attention in the literature. I refer to the construction in question as the 'stranded embedded clause' (SEC). SECs are a special type of echoed utterance, where an utterance in the form of an embedded clause is repeated for various reasons. The characteristic properties of the SEC involve the fact that there can be a mismatch between the type of the clause indicated by the clause type marker that they contain and the actual illocutionary force of the utterance that is indicated by its prosody. The complementizer is also obligatory, despite the fact that no matrix clause element shows up—hence, the name stranded embedded clause. I propose a deletion-based analysis of SECs, where they start out as a full-fledged embedded clause in a complex sentence and undergo movement, followed by deletion of the rest of the clause. It should be noted that this is essentially how fragment answers (and some other ellipsis constructions) have been analysed in the literature. Indeed, I show that there is a parallelism between SECs and fragment answers, which I argue provides support for the deletion-based approach to the former. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role of prosody in a little-studied type of non-canonical questions: syntactically and lexically canonical interrogative sentences that have been uttered by the speaker in order to express surprise. The study compares Estonian surprise questions with string-identical information-seeking questions elicited by means of context descriptions. The materials comprise 1,008 utterances by 21 speakers. It is concluded that the prosody of the examined utterances has three roles that are relevant to the expression of surprise by ordinary interrogative sentences. First, the enhanced prosodic realisation of the utterances as manifested in a longer duration, a wider pitch range, and a more frequent occurrence of upstepped pitch accents conveys emotional expressivity. Second, lower pitch along with the creaky voice quality signals that the utterances are not canonical questions, while the main prosodic correlate of information-seeking questions is high pitch. Phonological pitch accents and boundary tones, however, are not used to distinguish between surprise questions and information-seeking questions. Third, the nuclear accent placement signals an information structure that is associated with the expression of incongruity or counterexpectation: the focal accent can evoke an alternative (set) that arises from the speaker's expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• This paper studies how questions are signaled intonationally in utterances that have no morpho-syntactic cues. • Results show that H pre-nuclear and nuclear peaks are higher and located earlier in question than statement utterances. • Also, the rise to a F0 peak as well as the following fall in the pre-nuclear and nuclear accentual positions are shorter and steeper in the question contour. • The findings readily lend themselves to an auto-segmental approach to intonational phonology. Statements and questions in Persian are distinguished not only by morpho-syntactic but also by intonational means. This paper studies how questions are signaled intonationally in utterances that have no morpho-syntactic cues. A production experiment was designed that systematically manipulated sentence mode as well as the within-word position of stress in the target words in pre-nuclear and nuclear accentual positions. Our results showed that H pre-nuclear and nuclear peaks are higher and located earlier in question than statement utterances. Also, the rise to a F0 peak as well as the following fall in the pre-nuclear and nuclear accentual positions are shorter and steeper in the question contour. The data further revealed that the exact phonetic realization of pre-nuclear and nuclear accentual rises and falls depended on the proximity of adjacent tonal targets in the different word stress conditions we set up. Our findings readily lend themselves to an auto-segmental approach to intonational phonology which treats tunes as strings of independent categorically distinct tonal units associated with specific elements in the segmental structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at contributing to ascertain the principles of intonational grammar that lie behind the realization of nuclear contours and at presenting them in terms of Optimality Theory constraints. In order to do so, we analyse the prosody of the nuclear configuration of Southern Valencian Catalan yes-no questions, with special emphasis on situations where text-tune accommodation phenomena take place. The empirical data, which are analysed according to the principles of the autosegmental-metrical model, show a complex interplay of different phenomena at the text-tune interface, like vowel lengthening, tonal spreading, tonal retraction and intonation-driven schwa epenthesis. We argue that the variation detected in the data can be accounted for by the interaction of nine constraints (i.e., Max-IO(µp), Dep-IO(µs), Anchor(T%,Rt,IP,Rt), Anchor(L*,Rt,ˈσ,Rt), *Anchor(T,C), *Anchor(T,-voice), Share(T*,NC), Dep-IO(Associate), Max-IO(Associate)), whose ranking is established by means of a Stochastic Optimality Theory analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Musical compositions require genre-specific sophisticated performance techniques. This paper focuses primarily on the features of Chinese pop and traditional music, based on the music genre's influence on the vocal music. To achieve this goal, the analysis methods and the Shapiro-Wilk test were used. The study involved 218 music major students from the Beijing International Art School, Shanghai Normal University, and Guangzhou College of Music. The audience and respondents gave less preference to pop music (47% and 39%) compared to the traditional music (53% and 61%). The Shapiro-Wilk test revealed that, when it comes to pop music, the strongest preference was attributed to music geographical spread (0.867), and in the case of traditional music the strongest preference was for higher education (0.927). The paper established the specific features of different genres of music. The most common elements pertaining to pop music include: the option to apply a variety of music elements and singing techniques; rhythm stability; a simple form of vocal performance; extreme sound techniques; preserving the emotionality of the singing; a combination of Western and Chinese elements. Traditional music is characterized by a harmony of music elements and voice timbres, maintenance of the high-pitched voice, natural sound, throat singing, performance quality, preservation of Chinese traditional music elements. Traditional music instruction was the best thing for improving intonation (0.815), maintenance of sound quality (0.806), and development of vocal range (0.718). Pop music is known for a combination of various music elements (0.901), conveyance of the performance style (0.312). The paper's practical implications boil down to determining the characteristic features of pop and traditional music, as well as elements describing vocal music. Further studies might involve a comparative analysis between Chinese pop music, traditional music, and Western pop and traditional music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we report the analysis of the melodic behavior of wh-questions from the North of England. The corpus contains 107 utterances issued by 19 different native informants in real communicative situations, extracted from recordings of street interviews published on YouTube and carried out in the cities of York, Manchester, Sheffield and Liverpool. The analysis is conducted through the Melodic Analysis of Speech (MAS) method (Cantero, 2002) which allows us to quantify, standardize and compare melodic configurations. The results describe four different intonation patterns for this type of question. A rising final inflection pattern (E1: 27%); a falling final inflection pattern (E2: 58%); a circumflex rising-falling final inflection pattern (E3: 5%); and a high nucleus falling pattern (E4: 10%). After describing and quantifying each of these patterns, the results are discussed in relation to those melodic descriptions made by precedent authors in the existing literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to describe the prosodic features --nuclear pitch configurations and pitch range-- of neutral and oriented interrogative utterances in the Spanish of Mexico City. We carried out a study of polar and wh- questions recorded in the free conversation module of the Corpus Norma Lingüística Culta (Lope Blanch 1971) and Habla Popular de la Ciudad de México (Lope Blanch 1976). The findings of the qualitative analysis show: i) the nuclear pitch configuration L* (L)H% --with the variants L* (L)H%, L* ¡H%, !H* ¡H%-- in information-seeking yes-no questions and confirmation questions, ii) the nuclear configuration L* L% documented in neutral wh- questions, and the boundary tone H% produced in the non-neutral condition --hypothetical or confirmative-- of the utterance; iii) the use of the pitch range as a potential prosodic resource for the expression of lesser or greater knowledge about the expected answer. The spontaneous speech data partially confirm the descriptions based on discourse completion tasks for this variety of Spanish (de-la-Mota et al. 2010). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper jointly considers syntactic, semantic, and phonological/phonetic factors in approaching an understanding of BIN, a remote past marker in African American English that has been described as "stressed." It brings together data from the Corpus of Regional African American Language (CORAAL) and a production study in a small African American English-speaking community in southwest Louisiana to investigate the use and phonetic realization of BIN constructions. Only 20 instances of BIN constructions were found in CORAAL. This sparsity was not simply due to a dearth of semantic contexts for BIN in the interviews, since 122 instances of semantically equivalent been + temporal adverbial variants were also found. These results raise questions about the extent to which BIN constructions and been + temporal adverbial variants are used in different pragmatic and discourse contexts as well as in different speech styles. The production study elicited BIN and past participle been constructions in controlled syntactic and semantic environments. The phonetic realization of BIN was found to be distributed over the entire utterance rather than localized to BIN. BIN utterances were distinguished from past participle been utterances by having higher ratios of fundamental frequency (F0), intensity, and duration in BIN / been relative to preceding and following material in the utterance. In both studies, BIN utterances were generally realized with a high F0 peak on BIN and a reduced F0 range in the post- BIN region, with variability in the presence and kinds of F0 movements utterance-initially and utterance-finally, as well as in F0 downtrends in the post- BIN region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates intonation in the urban dialect of Liverpool, Scouse. Scouse is reported to be part of a group of dialects in the north of the UK where rising contours in declaratives are a traditional aspect of the dialect. This intonation is typologically unusual and has not been the subject of detailed previous research. Here, we present such an analysis in comparison with Manchester, a city less than 40 miles from Liverpool but with a noticeably different prosody. Our analysis confirms reports that rising contours are the most common realization for declaratives in Liverpool, specifically a low rise where final high pitch is not reached until the end of the phrase. Secondly, we consider the origin of declarative rises in Scouse with reference to the literature on new dialect formation. Our demographic analysis and review of previous work on relevant dialects suggests that declarative rises were not the majority variant when Scouse was formed but may have been adopted for facilitating communication in a diverse new community. We highlight this contribution of intonational data to research on phonological aspects of new dialect formation, which have largely considered segmental phonology or timing previously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with the contributions of signal-driven and expectation-driven mechanisms to a general understanding of the phenomenon of prosodic prominence from a cross-linguistic perspective. It serves as an introduction to the concept of prosodic prominence and discusses the eight papers in the Special Issue, which cover a genetically diverse range of languages. These include Djambarrpuyŋu (an Australian Pama-Nyungan language), Samoan (an Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian language), the Indo-European languages English (Germanic), French (Romance), and Russian (Slavic), Korean (Koreanic), Medumba (Bantu), and two Sino-Tibetan languages, Mandarin and Taiwanese Southern Min. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyze some syllable lengthening phaenomena in oral speech of south-central area of Asturias. In local language converge both vowel harmony and syllable lengthening phaenomena linked to different pragmatic functions, either with stressed and unstressed phonetic units. This phenomena will be analysed attending to different illocutionary types and different pragmatic variables as well as considering their confluence with other kinds of prominence (intensity and pitch) and even incipent cases of grammaticalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the first dialectometric analysis of intonational variation of standard spoken Romanian. The data analysed (26,680 sentences) were gathered within the AMPER-ROM project and the dialectometrical analysis has been carried out with ProDis. The results are consistent with the geolinguistic descriptions of Romanian varieties. ProDis identified two major areas for yes-no questions: a central-eastern one (Moldo-Walachian), with rising contours, and a central-western one (Transylvanian, discontinuously continuing over Bukovina to Bessarabia--the Republic of Moldova--), which presents also falling contours. The study suggests that intonational areas are somehow more conservative of and (relatively) independent from segmental dialectal areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on an analysis of the intonation patterns of different types of vocatives in Romanian language. We present the main characteristics of the tonal patterns observed in the vocative constructions instances of isolated vocatives and contexts in which vocatives occur in different positions: initial, middle, and final. Our analysis, in the framework of AM phonology with ToBI conventions, reveals that most of isolated vocatives are realized as LsH*(!)H% (vocative chant), and L+H* L% (insistent call). For non-isolated vocatives the most frequent contours are labeled as L+H* L% and H+L* L%. Cross-linguistically, our findings show that Romanian vocatives display the same pattern as other Romance languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We perform automatic classification tasks on speech data from eight Arabic dialects. • A segmentally-informed automatic accent recognition system is used for these tasks. • The system achieves 95.3% correct on read speech and 77.9% on spontaneous speech. • We adapt the system to try to make use of intonational variation in Arabic dialects. • We use outputs from both systems to comment on variation across Arabic dialects. Dialect variation spans different linguistic levels of analysis. Two examples include the typical phonetic realisations produced and the typical range of intonational choices made by individuals belonging to a given dialect group. Taking the modeling principles of a specific automatic accent recognition system, the work here characterises and observes the variation that exists within these two levels of analysis among eight Arabic dialects. Using a method that has previously shown promising performance on English accent varieties, we first model the segmental level of analysis from recordings of Arabic speakers to capture the variation in the phonetic realisations of the vowels and consonants. In doing so, we show how powerful this model can be in distinguishing between Arabic dialects. This paper then shows how this modeling approach can be adapted to instead characterise prosodic variation among these same dialects from the same speech recordings. This allows us to inspect the relative power of the segmental and prosodic levels of analysis in separating the Arabic dialects. This work opens up the possibility of using these modeling frameworks to study the extent and nature of phonetic and prosodic variation across speech corpora. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the Q-marking construction: an interrogative construction in which a question phrase takes scope over a higher clause even though it appears in a lower clause. In this construction, the scope of a question phrase is extended by the presence of another word, the Q-marker, in a higher clause. While the syntax of this construction has been described and analysed in a number of works, its intonation is yet to receive commensurate attention. This paper presents data from two unrelated languages in which the Q-marking construction can be used to form questions: Hungarian and Slovenian. Data show that while the Q-marker shares properties with question words in Hungarian (they bear the same pitch accent), in Slovenian the Q-marker and question words bear distinct pitch accents. Furthermore, in Hungarian a direct intonational link exists between the Q-marker and a question phrase whose scope is extended, rather than an indirect one between the Q-marker and the entire lower clause in which the question phrase appears. The Slovenian data are compatible with the existence of either an indirect or a direct intonational link. These findings reveal hitherto unidentified dimensions of cross-linguistic variation, for which any analysis of the Q-marking construction must account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper provides a descriptive analysis of the Sept fragments de Tristan Tzara, a unitary song cycle, organized on the basis of an internal dramaturgy, in which the poet's verses (used in French in original) outline the thematic framework pervaded by the central idea of love. The unity of the interpretation of the cycle of the Seven fragments from Tristan Tzara can be achieved only after a deep knowledge of the expressive and symbolic springs of the musical-poetic discourse. The study of the musical segments closely leads to the comprehension of the musical language in the process of decoding the encrypted meanings in the score, an image of the whole being configured only when the cycle is complete. The elements of assimilation, memorization and interpretation will be tracked and chiselled into the vocal-instrumental duo throughout each song. The vocal techniques used vary according to both the particularities of the language elements and the way of their psycho-affective representation in interpretation. The vocality, adapted to the rhythmic and metrical writing of the pieces, requires a perfect mastery of the interpretive technique. The vocal part, as a constitutive part of a musical discourse with a modal language of synthesis, is emphasized by the writing in the piano accompaniment, in which the chordic structures are either gravitational or geometric. Analysing the form of the works, we concluded that, in each case, they are entirely subordinate to the needs of a dramatic sense and closely related to the poetic and musical images. Nevertheless, our paper is embedded within a personal interpretative vision on the "fragments" of the cycle, bearing the imprint of the subjectivity that resides in the personal reception of the meanings of music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the theory proposed in Frascarelli (2007), according to which the interpretation of null subjects depends on an Agree relation between pro and a specific type of Topic (i.e. the A-Topic, cf. Frascarelli & Hinterhölzl 2007), the first objective of this paper is to evaluate this theory from an acquisitional perspective on children from 3 to 9 years old. Furthermore, since the A-Topic is argued to be systematically associated to specific discourse, prosodic and syntactic properties, a second objective of this paper is to check whether the relevant acquisition correlates with information-structural and interface-related competences. Based on an original experiment designed to examine Topic chains in children's narrative, evidence is provided that this productive ability is not fully acquired at the age of 9 and that its progress proceeds in three steps, involving different levels of grammar. Specifically, in a first phase children tend to assume their personal experience and discourse intentions as familiar to their interlocutors. Hence, they start their narration linking null subjects to silent A-Topics, without overt links for their interpretation ('Emperor Strategy'). Then, at the age of 6 the creation of Topic chains seems to be part of children's competence at a discourse-syntactic level and overt copies are progressively produced in the chains. Nevertheless, since children still assume their 'hero' to be a familiar entity, G[iven]-Topics are frequently realised as first link for null subjects. Finally, at around 7–7.11 the adult-like association between discourse-syntactic and prosodic properties is attested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This corpus-based study focuses on the spoken nature of insubordination by analyzing intonation vis-à-vis interpersonal functions associated with specific insubordination patterns in spontaneously produced Czech conversations. This paper shows that there is a consistent relationship between the epistemic function of a given variant and its intonational contour: the pattern found in argumentative settings is associated with a conclusive, sharply falling cadence, while the variant found in collaborative contexts and imparting an explicative flavor has a slightly rising melody, suggesting inconclusiveness. We also discovered a clear parallelism between these two intonational variants and an intonational split in the embedded polar questions after the verb form nevím 'I don't know', the most likely source of the insubordinate structures. This finding further motivates the interpersonal functions served by the insubordination patterns: the argumentative variant marks a high degree of confidence about p not being true, while the slightly rising contour of the explicative pattern marks a low degree of confidence in p being true, thus necessarily projecting tentativeness. The results strengthen the status of these patterns as conventional grammatical units distinct from their syntactic source; they show that their phonic properties provide salient interpretive cues; and they also contribute to the question of how we conceptualize the emergence of insubordination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a two-part research project, conducted in order to see how Hungarian learners with at least vantage level of Spanish realize melodic peaks in their Spanish utterances. First, we are focusing on the tonal and distributional characteristics of melodic peaks, taking into consideration the proportion of the rise in f0 with respect to the previous syllable and examining if the affected syllable is lexically stressed. Second, the range of the tonal rise until the first peak of the utterance is analyzed. The method applied in both cases is Cantero Serena’s Prosodic Analysis of Speech (2019), which represents intonation by objectively comparable standardized melodic curves. The differences found in the speech of Hungarian learners as compared to native Spanish speakers have not proved to be significant in the aspects analyzed here. The main finding of the research is that native Spanish speakers tend to realize the first peak of their declarative sentences as the highest f0 point of the utterance, whereas this is less typical in the oral production of Hungarian learners of Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intonation is one of the main challenges violin students face throughout their studies. This paper aims to determine the impact of Equal Temperament on the intonation ability of violin students in two music conservatories located in the Spanish Autonomous Region of Extremadura. With this aim of realizing a non-experimental quantitative study, a cross-sectional exploratory study has been carried out in order to gather and measure information concerning the variable object of study of intonational ability. Results suggest that, despite comparatively high scores obtained in the realm of Just Intonation, the students' intonation ability behaves similarly in the domain of Equal Temperament. Keys which tend to be more in tune have also been established, along with the non-tempered nature of the instrument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Speech prosody, the melodic and rhythmic properties of a language, plays a critical role in our everyday communication. Researchers have identified unique patterns of prosody that segment words and phrases, highlight focal elements in a sentence, and convey holistic meanings and speech acts that interact with the information shared in context. The mapping between the sound and meaning represented in prosody is suggested to be probabilistic—the same physical instance of sounds can support multiple meanings across talkers and contexts while the same meaning can be encoded in physically distinct sound patterns (e.g., pitch movements). The current overview presents an analysis framework for probing the nature of this probabilistic relationship. Illustrated by examples from the literature and a dataset of German focus marking, we discuss the production variability within and across talkers and consider challenges that this variability imposes on the comprehension system. A better understanding of these challenges, we argue, will illuminate how the human perceptual, cognitive, and computational mechanisms may navigate the variability to arrive at a coherent understanding of speech prosody. The current paper is intended to be an introduction for those who are interested in thinking probabilistically about the sound‐meaning mapping in prosody. Open questions for future research are discussed with proposals for examining prosodic production and comprehension within a comprehensive, mathematically‐motivated framework of probabilistic inference under uncertainty. This article is categorized under:Linguistics > Language in Mind and BrainPsychology > Language [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper aims to analyze the intonational pattern of postal codes in Brazilian Portuguese spoken in the states of Alagoas, Bahia and Sergipe. Following the literature, we selected for the analysis f0 variation, boundary tone, and pitch reset (Ladd 2008, Swerts 1997, Oliveira Jr 2000). The speech samples were collected and compose project funded by CNPq. We found a recurring high boundary tone, marking the prosodic boundaries within the utterance and a low tone associated with the end of the utterance. We also found that there was a declination of f0 within the intonation unit and this was more significant as a global pattern. These results suggest that the utterance of postal codes in Brazilian Portuguese are integrated into an underlying structure of the language, and that through systematic use of specific intonational patterns, speakers of Brazilian Portuguese treat this numerical grouping as typical declarative sentences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

No satisfactory theory considering the mutual interaction of tones, on the one hand, and accentuation and intonation on the other, has been elaborated as yet. This paper therefore concentrates on the observation of consistence of four tones contours. It is demonstrated by the oscillograms obtained by the author of this paper in 1969-1970 at Berkeley for three speakers where the tones are either controlled by the speaker or are the automatic result of acoustic phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In constructionist approaches, constructions are defined as pairings of phonological, morphological and syntactic form, and semantic, pragmatic or discursive meaning. However, in practice very few constructional analyses deal specifically with the intonational properties of constructions. Moreover, constructional approaches are not clear about the ontological status of intonation in a constructional model of language. Combining insights from Construction Grammar and Intonational Studies, specifically the Autosegmental Metrical framework of intonational phonology and the Tones and Breaks Indices (ToBI) transcription model, this paper discusses the role of prosody in a construction-based approach to language, through the analysis of the insubordinate conditional construction (ICC) in Spanish. Building on the analysis of the prosody of 90 tokens of the ICC uttered by 14 native speakers of Peninsular Spanish, we argue that the best way to account for the relationship between intonational patterns and (lexicogrammatical) constructions is to treat intonational patterns as constructions that pair a phonological form with a semantic-pragmatic meaning, which are then inherited by sentence-level constructions as long as their meanings are compatible. • AM intonational models are compatible with constructional approaches. • Prosodic constructions are pairings of a contour (form) and meaning. • Prosodic constructions can have allostructions and dialectal variation. • Sentence-level constructions inherit their prosody. • They inherit it from an abstract prosodic construction with congruent function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study the elements of political discourse where persuasion is present as communicative strategy. In particular, we focus on the analysis of intonation and affectivity in a two-candidate Spanish electoral debate (Hidalgo Downing and Nieto y Otero 2014; Ponsonnet 2014; Reber 2012).The methodology consisted in selecting the openings and closings of each turn, taking the act as analysis unit (Briz 2003); for the acoustic analysis we have examined three parameters – fundamental frequency, intensity and vowel durations –, and four strategies for the positive affective bonds: assertiveness, inclusion, specificity and naturalization, in order to pursue the initial hypothesis on whether it is possible to find relations between intonation and affectivity. The analysis shows that both candidates use affective bonds and intonation to enhance persuasion, although there are interesting differences between candidates and between openings and closings. While openings show greater number and variety of strategies, both verbal and intonational, closings show lower intonational contours and less variation, therefore openings showing higher use of positive persuasive strategies, whereas in closings, there are no strategies addressed to the hearer, the most frequent being assertiveness. As for intonational contours, there is a general lowering in all values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tone deafness refers to a condition where a person is unable to distinguish between different musical notes. Afflicted persons are not able to recognize the difference when 2 different musical notes are played. This inability is not caused by a lack of musical knowledge or training but is instead caused by genetic inheritance or brain damage. Tone deafness is a disability that is shown in music only. People who are tone deaf do not have a problem in recognizing the different intonations in human speech. This disability is also associated with the inability to follow musical rhythms and recognize songs. In this paper, we propose the ability of participants to recognize and repeat the musical notes that they hear. Testing was done using only the left ear, only the right ear, and both ears. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: The main goal of this paper is to analyse how social factors determine the degree of occurrence of intonational features of Basque in Spanish in the Basque Country (i.e. Basque Spanish). Design/methodology/approach: We concentrate on information-seeking yes/no questions. In Castilian Spanish, these end in a rising contour, whereas in Basque they end in a rising–falling contour. The data were gathered through sociolinguistic interviews with 12 speakers of Basque Spanish with different linguistic profiles: monolingual Spanish; first language Spanish–second language Basque; and L1 Basque–L2 Spanish. Data and analysis: 172 information-seeking yes/no interrogatives were obtained from conversational speech. Their final intonational contours were annotated in the Spanish Tone and Break Index model of intonational analysis. Findings/conclusions: 79% of all information-seeking yes/no questions had final configurations with a rising–falling circumflex contour. Only 21% had the final rising contour of Castilian Spanish. Speakers differed in their frequency of occurrence of falling contours, but the differences did not correlate with the speakers' linguistic profile (monolingual vs bilingual). Rather, higher percentages of yes/no questions ending in a falling contour were found among speakers who had (a) a higher degree of contact with the Basque ethnolinguistic group, and (b) more positive attitudes towards the Basque language and the Basque ethnolinguistic group. Originality: Methodologically, this study is original because the intonational analysis is carried out on natural speech rather than on read or elicited speech. This study is also original from a theoretical point of view because it is the first one to underline the role that subjective factors such as linguistic attitudes play in the adoption of features of a language variety from another contact variety. Significance/implications: Our research opens up a path to continue investigating the weight of subjective social factors such as linguistic attitudes in explaining the variation in the influence of one language variety over another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper probes the robustness of Traunmüller and Eriksson's methodology to determine the base value of the fundamental frequency of speech, an estimator of a speaker's typical F0 value. The methodology entails the estimation of a constant, k, indicating where the base value for a speaker lies in relation to F0 standard deviations below the F0 mean. The methodology was originally developed from acted speech samples. Here we test if k values can be successfully obtained from non-acted samples and how they compare to the ones reported by Traunmüller and Eriksson. A speech corpus of speech samples differing in speaking styles (spontaneous interview, sentence reading, word list reading) from seven languages (English, Estonian, French, German, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, Swedish) was used. Results show that k values estimated from non-acted speech are roughly the same as those reported in Traunmüller and Eriksson's original paper. We speculate that deviations can be explained by the fact that some speakers make extensive use of non-modal register. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the first "Prosodic Map of Chile", a long-term project aimed at documenting and describing (both phonetically and phonologically) the suprasegmental features of Chilean Spanish. In order to better appreciate the map's reach, a review of currently implemented similar prosodic maps is provided, including AMPER, ATLES and some others. This review considers what particular parameters are studied in each map, closely inspecting what are the foundations, directions and the overall reach of each one of them. The closing section provides a consideration of some freely available software tools designed to build maps, particularly OpenStreetMap, focusing on its potential for future international collaborative efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last decades, many studies point to music as a fully collaborative activity, and, therefore, the advantages of cooperative learning in music teaching. This paper presents "Oidos a Pares" (Hears in Pairs), an innovation educational project based on cooperative learning aimed at improving competences in intonation and aural perception in violin and viola students. The innovation consists in the use of reciprocal peer tutoring, pairs of students with an asymmetric relationship in terms of level of competence, who learn by teaching each other, based on a common and shared objective. All this is done through a framework of interaction structured by the teacher and a specific didactic material. For this, an experience has been designed and implemented with 10 students of violin and viola from grade 6 and 7, which is reported here. The article highlights the potential of peer tutoring in music education, points out specific elements to be considered to make the most of this strategy, and shows an example of the experience carried out. Findings reveal that this project turned out to be a successful and positive experience. Proving that these methods, despite being underexplored in instrumental teaching, can provide valuable options in music education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on the relevant literature, this paper provides an up-to-now missing overarching approach to 'optional' wh -in situ questions in Greek, by arguing that some properties of wh -in situ are computed at the interface between syntax and semantics, other properties relate to the syntax-pragmatics interface, and yet others are derived at the interface between PF and pragmatics. Wh -in situ is not semantically (hence, syntactically) equivalent to wh -fronting, with the latter being the default strategy of Greek on empirical grounds. Wh -in situ assumes distinct syntax and semantics, while its pragmatics is computed partly by the way it is associated to the discourse, and partly by intonation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents preliminary outcomes of the analysis of the rising tone phenomenon found in utterances with a wide focus produced by six monolingual Spanish speakers and six native speakers of Mapudungun who have a functional command of Spanish, all of them from Región de La Araucanía in Chile. The intonational phrases of the five first minutes of conversation with native speakers were analyzed in order to describe the pitch of nuclear and postnuclear syllables (tones). These were later compared with equivalent utterances produced by monolingual speakers. The outcomes, expressed in phonological notation (Sp-ToBI) and in semitones, show a tendency to a higher tone rise in speakers from the foothills of the Andes mountain range as compared with speakers from rural areas located nearer the capital of the Region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses and studies the melodic behavior of five female informants of Mexican origin or descent, three of them residents in the city of Los Angeles in the United States, and two in Mexico, one in Mexico City and the other in Puebla. There are two main objectives: firstly, to contribute to the prosodic description of Mexican Spanish on both sides of the political border between both countries (declarative statements and neutral absolute interrogatives), and secondly, to verify the continuity between the Mexican-American intonation of LA and that of MX Mexican. We followed the methodology developed by the research groups that make up Amper-Mexico and Amper-California Los Angeles, within the framework of the international AMPER project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores fronted verb phrases in German, drawing attention to the difference between passive/unaccusative VPs and fronted agentive vPs. While both kinds of verb phrases have been discussed in the literature as being frontable, it has been largely overlooked that fronted vPs typically come with a certain kind of post-fronting context and a rise-fall or bridge-contour intonation, which is characteristic of I-topicalization. We observe that, unlike VPs, agentive vPs essentially need to be I-topics, with a high tone at the right edge of the fronted domain, in order to be frontable. Given the special context required for fronted vPs, the situation described by the vP does not contain new information but must already have been under discussion and is now being commented on. We present the results of two experimental studies and appeal to the thetic/categorical distinction to offer a new angle on the definiteness effect that has been associated with fronted verb phrases. We propose that a subject-containing fronted vP is associated with a thetic rather than the default categorical judgment, which means that the fronted subject and predicate form only one information-structural unit (a topic) rather than two (topic and comment). Contributing to the literature on theticity, we observe that, unlike in non-fronting thetic statements, the subject in fronted vPs cannot be a true definite. We attribute this to clashing intonation restrictions on theticity in non-fronting constructions versus theticity in just the fronted portion of a sentence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper introduces the melodic characterisation of spontaneous Spanish presented by speakers from two regions in the north of Spain: Asturias and Navarre, based on a conversational corpus composed of 100 utterances emitted by 62 participants. It focuses on the intonation of the dialects, an aspect which is poorly investigated but highly relevant for characterising and distinguishing one from the other. The study is based on the Melodic Analysis of Speech method, a meticulous acoustic analysis through which exact values are obtained from spontaneous speech, which can then be compared. In short, the most notable coincident and divergent melodic features between the two dialects are: (1) the tendency of the two to present a first peak, more frequently tonic in Asturian Spanish and atonic in Navarrese; (2) an almost flat or slightly falling body of the contour with abundant internal inflections, which are also distinguished by the syllable where the rise ends: tonic in Asturian Spanish, and tonic and atonic in the final position of the word in Navarrese; and (3) more pronounced final inflections, with five different endings, and tonal fields, in the region of Navarre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the linkage between intonation nested in conversation turns where the speaker is introducing something delicate (e.g., presenting information liable to provoke distancing) or pre‐empting resistance to their proposal when there is a strong risk of rejection. These movements, which appear prosodically marked, deviate not only from the local context of the conversation, but from the conversation as a whole. A speech acoustic analysis of three examples of prosodic signalling within these turns suggests that speakers employ a distinct design and delivery which includes a high terminal peak in the intonation contour. We interpret this signalling to represent responsive and resistant local social actions in a rejection implicative sequential environment. Finally, they show evidence of being pre‐planned and important to the speaker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been shown in the literature that cross-linguistically, the other-initiated repair element 'huh' is typically realised with rising intonation. Icelandic has exceptional status in this respect in that it has falling intonation with Ha [ha:] 'huh'. The literature claims that it is language-specific interrogative prosody that accounts for this exceptional status of Icelandic. More specifically, it argues that falling intonation is the default for questions in Icelandic and that the other-initiated repair interjection shares its intonational features with interrogatives. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, using map-task data, it confirms previous results for the intonation of Icelandic Ha, and in addition shows that its more complex relative Hvað segirðu/Hvað sagðirðu 'What do/did you say?' is realised with falling intonation as well. Both expressions are realised with an H* pitch accent followed by downward pitch movement to L%. Secondly, the paper argues, for a number of reasons, against the assumption that question prosody is enough to account for the Icelandic pattern, and it suggests instead that Ha and Hvað segirðu/Hvað sagðirðu are in fact not specifically marked in intonation, but are realised with a combination of pitch accent and boundary tone found across utterance types in Icelandic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper looks at the meaning of an understudied contour in American English, a plateau, as it contrasts with a rise, using a context (list intonation) in which they have been said to have different meanings. Results from a metalinguistic experiment (Experiment 1) suggested that plateaus and rises contrast on two dimensions. The first is epistemic: the plateaus indicate that a speaker believes the listener already knows the list items (a reminding meaning), while rises indicate that the speaker believes the listener doesn't already know the list items (an informing meaning). The second is attitudinal: the plateaus are heard as condescending, and the rises, helpful. An experiment (Experiment 2) confirmed these general findings using lists with three items. Experiment 3 replicated the results for the epistemic meanings with a single instance of the contours, suggesting that these meanings can be associated with plateaus and rises more generally, rather than just in lists. Experiment 4 explored how context might affect the attitudinal interpretation of these contours. Our results, showing that our proposed meanings for plateaus and rises hold across contexts, are consistent with other approaches to linguistic meaning focused on how intonation cues belief states, rather than being tied to specific speech acts like listing. Highlights • This work explores the meanings of plateaus and rises in list contexts using experimental methods • Distinctions between the contours revolve around speaker beliefs about listener's knowledge • Plateaus signal that the speaker believes the listener knows the list items • Rises signal that the speaker believes the listener does not know the list items • Plateaus are heard as more condescending; rises, more helpful [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work is a contribution to the Project Comparative Study of Intonation and Accent in borderlands of the Spanish Language (FFI2014-52716-P). In this paper we describe the melodic characteristics of a set of neutral declarative and absolute interrogative sentences, which have been extracted from a formal corpus uttered by women from rural areas of Cuba and Venezuela. While choosing the test sites, we have followed the proposed dialectal divisions by García Riverón (1988) and Mora (1996 y 1997). The analyses are performed using MatLab sub-routines (López-Bobo et al.). F0 absolute values are relativized into semitones, and their perceptive importance is determined above the 1.5 semitone differential threshold (Rietveld/Gussenhoven). These analyses have allowed us to carry out a phonetic-phonologic study that shows, among other results, differences in the interrogative modality that separate the rural areas from other urban areas that have been analysed in earlier studies (Dorta). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children who are born with a profound hearing loss have no or only distorted acoustic speech target to imitate and compare their own production with. Computer based visual feedback, visual presentation of speech on screen has shown to be an effective supplement of incomplete or distorted auditory feedback in the case of children with grave hearing-impairment. In this paper, we introduce a novel prosody teaching system where intensity (accent), intonation and rhythm are presented visually for the students (in both separate and combined display mode) as visual feedback and automatic assessment scores are given jointly and separately for the goodness of intonation and rhythm. Evaluation of the automatic assessment was done with cooperation of experts in the field of treatment of hard of hearing children. The results showed that the automatic assessment scores correspond to the subjective evaluations given by the teachers. The evaluation of the whole system was done in a school for hard of hearing children, by comparing the development of a group of students using our prosody teaching system with the development of a control group. The speaking ability of students were compared by a subjective listening experiment after a 3 months teaching course. The students who used the computer based prosody teaching software could produce nicer prosody than the students in the control group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the prosodic realization of dual-focus in German, that is, two foci in a single sentence, with special consideration of the interaction between focus assignment and phrasing. In a production experiment, dual-focus was compared with its initial, final, and all-new counterparts in sentences with subject NPs and VPs of different lengths. The results showed that there were three different patterns of dual-focus realization: (1) The most frequent one was the two-peak pattern (57.8%), that is, a falling tone on both focused words and compressed and lowered pitch in-between; (2) the second most frequent was the two-phrase realization (23.5%), in which both foci were also realized as a falling tone, but in this case, a high boundary tone was inserted after the subject NP; (3) the least frequent pattern was the hat-pattern (18.7%), consisting of a rising tone on the first focus and a falling tone on the second one while the pitch in-between is kept as a high plateau. This was applied mostly in utterances containing a short subject NP. We interpret these results in terms of optional prosodic phrasing. A sentence with two foci can be realized in one or two intonation phrases, but in both cases, the focus is assigned within the prosodic domain derived from syntax. These results show that Culminativity, the principle requiring a one-to-one correspondence between prosodic domains and their heads, is violable in German. Two equally prominent pitch accents are allowed to co-exist in one intonation phrase. Finally, the metrical structure of dual-focus speaks for a recursive structure of German prosody. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an analysis of Chocó Spanish (CS) neutral declarative intonation. Results show that this Afro-Colombian dialect, in line with other black vernaculars spoken in Latin America and other cases of Spanish in contact, presents a reduced inventory of pitch accents when compared to other varieties of Spanish. Specifically, L+H* (i.e., peak alignment within the stressed syllable) predominates in both prenuclear and nuclear phrase positions, which deviates quite significantly from common Spanish trends, where there is often a distinction between nuclear L+H*/L* and prenuclear L+>H* (i.e., peak displacement to a post-tonic syllable). Conversely, at the intermediate and intonational phrase levels (ip and IP, respectively), CS appears to reflect other native (non-contact) varieties of Spanish, showing H- ip boundaries to indicate the continuation of a thought and L% IP boundaries to signal the conclusion of an idea. Our findings are further compared with results from other contact varieties to show that certain aspects of CS intonation may be conceived as the byproduct of the transmission of second language (L2) intonational features to following generations of first language (L1) speakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a descriptive model of the melodic characteristics of expressions of politeness attenuators in Catalan, based on the acoustic analysis of a spontaneous speech corpus and its subsequent perceptive validation. The model allows the pragmatic analysis of the phenomenon to be covered, as well as offering future guidelines for its teaching. In addition, the results of the analysis reflect the extensive character of the phenomenon, which surpasses the strict limits of idiomatic code, and allows inter-linguistic analysis. The paper is the product of the collaboration between the Melodic Analysis of Speech and Fonocortesía research projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I present a brief historical overview of the studies of intonation which seeks to show the noticeable and persistent ambiguity of the concept. I will focus my attention in the theoretical and analytical model of Cantero Serena (2002). I will also include, in a second part of the paper, a number of objections to this theory: personal reflections that seek to establish a theory of the detached tone of semiology of Saussure and point out some clues that will bring us to achieve complete and complex descriptions of intonation. In the third part of the paper, I offer the melodic profile of speakers from Navarre. The data provided are based on the acoustic analysis of an oral corpus of spontaneous speech, developed ad hoc, whose characteristics are also discussed in the document. The characterization we offer is the result of the implementation of the method of melodic analysis that suggested Francisco José Cantero Serena (1995) and that was implemented by Dolors Font-Rotchés in an investigation about Catalan intonation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research paper presents initial findings regarding the analysis of rising intonation contours in final, broad focus declarative utterances recorded in Chiloé (Chile). These utterances-- unlike the great majority that have been reported in different varieties of Spanish and characterized by a falling nuclear configuration--exhibit a rising terminal pitch. The first acoustic data of conversational speech are analysed and preliminary phonological observations are made. Acoustic evidence of the rise is included, together with tentative phonological labelling and, finally, questions are raised and possibilities for further investigation are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has already been observed that there is no one-to-one mapping between intonational categories and the pragmatic functions they are used to express. For instance, in German a particular pitch accent (L+H ∗ ) is often used to express contrastive (corrective) focus, but neither is the use of this pitch accent confined to this function nor is this the only pitch accent used to express it. In particular, there are considerable differences across speakers in the use of pitch accents and the functions they express. In this paper we look at the phonetic parameters that are characteristic of each of these pitch accents (f0 peak alignment, tonal onglide and target height) and observe a striking similarity across speakers: All speakers modulate each parameter in the same direction, e.g. the f0 peak is aligned later for contrastive focus than for narrow focus. Whereas for some speakers this is transcribed as two different pitch accents (L+H ∗ vs. H ∗ ), for others it is not, and the peak alignment is treated as phonetic variation within one accent type (H ∗ ). To capture both the differences and similarities in intonation, we therefore argue for an integrated analysis of the discrete phonological pitch accents and the modulation of continuous phonetic parameters that characterise them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]