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The fundamental frequency (f) is considered a salient feature in the acoustic structure of the speech signal. The objective of our study was to investigate the/0 characteristics of speakers when reciting poetry. We recorded 24 speakers, who prepared and read out two poems by the same author but of a different character both in form and in content. The central research question was whether we could find any stable characteristics of the speakers that would be present in both texts. A complementary question of equal importance concerns the identification of features that consistently differ in the two texts. We wanted to know to what extent the differences in the structure and mood of the two poems alter the/ parameters produced by individual speakers. Sixteen analyses were carried out, of which seven can be considered standard, while nine are less commonly used and, therefore, worth exploring. The results suggest that various methods of inquiry have their merits, and a combination of approaches is commendable. The best performing variables in our sample were the/ baseline, the declination trendline and the proportion of continuation melodemes used by a speaker. These three characteristics are presented in a 3D display. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phonetic research has developed both impressionistic and more objective means of describing the basic units of intonation. The quantification involved in the approaches based on acoustic measurements provides more detail and it is a necessary prerequisite for the comparability and replicability of the results of different studies. In addition to having these characteristics, a proper description of intonation should be comprehensible and meaningful. This article presents a method for describing melodic contours using Legendre polynomials, which yields a few coefficients that capture the basic properties of the analysed contour (e.g. level or slope). This approach thus connects objectivity and quantitative precision with common linguistic concepts. The article also proposes the use of Legendre polynomials for the description of traditionally recognized Czech melodemes through the analysis of schemes reported in the literature. Further research on real material could verify the validity of these categories and the usefulness of the method itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study focuses on two problems connected with speech tempo. First, earlier research has been prevalently concerned with central tendencies while variation was mostly perceived as an auxiliary result. We believe, however, that information about data dispersion is essential for proper modelling and experiment design in the field of temporal structure of speech. Therefore, the present study provides reference values for some of the tempo metrics of variation that pertain to (a) between-genre differences, (b) within-genre differences, (c) inter-speaker differences, and (d) intra-speaker differences. Second, we tested the claim that faster tempi lead to fewer prosodic breaks in spoken texts. This claim had been supported by studies where a respondent was asked to produce the same text at various rates. We, on the other hand, pose a question of the number of prosodic breaks in speakers who are fast or slow inherently. The material used in the study represents two genres: poetry reciting and news reading, and we obtained recordings from 24 speakers in each genre. Apart from providing the quantifications, the outcomes suggest, for example, that the predisposition of individual speakers to produce fast or slow tempi differs between the two genres. The fastest speakers in news reading were not necessarily the fastest in poetry reciting. This result points at specific behaviour in different situations and invites caution concerning the idea of hard-wired speaking stereotypes in individuals. Also, the correlation between speakers' rates and the number of phrases they produced was significant only in news reading, not in poetry reciting. This result was corroborated by greater variation in prosodic boundary placement in news reading. In addition, the results offer an insight into the relationship between articulation rate and speech rate, together with the comparison of measurements in syllables per second and phones per second. The latter can be of interest since Czech (the language of the material) belongs to languages with a complex syllabic structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study addresses the unresolved issue of speech melody in Czech question-word questions (i.e., specific, information or content questions). Some renowned authors claim that these questions use the same melodic courses as statements, whereas others suggest salient modifications. We contribute to the debate with the results of an experiment, in which 24 speakers were recorded producing context-embedded utterances that formed latent question-statement pairs. The pairs under scrutiny were not obvious to the speakers but they structurally differed in just one or two phonemes and preserved identical stress-group and syllabic patterns. The analysis of the melodic contours shows that although both statements and interrogatives are generally (even if not always) produced with a falling contour, the placement of the melodic peak and its magnitude differ significantly. While statements are typically furnished with a late intonational nucleus, question-word questions more commonly display a higher early peak. Additionally, various pragmatic components of the messages are suggested that correlate with the individual tune shapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]