Amalia Arvaniti
Radboud University Nijmegen, Modern Languages & Cultures, Faculty Member
- University of Kent, Department of English Language and Linguistics, Faculty Memberadd
This is a book chapter on AM submitted to Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel & Jonathan Barnes (eds) for their volume "Prosodic Theory and Practice" (MIT Press).
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In Pierrehumbert (1980) three rising accents are posited for English, H*, L+H * and L*+H, but this three-way contrast has often been disputed. In the present experiment, Minnesotan and Southern Californian speakers read two dialogs which... more
In Pierrehumbert (1980) three rising accents are posited for English, H*, L+H * and L*+H, but this three-way contrast has often been disputed. In the present experiment, Minnesotan and Southern Californian speakers read two dialogs which included four levels of emphasis. Emphasis lengthened segmental duration, raised the scaling of all tones and delayed H alignment in L+H*. Independently of emphasis effects, in both dialects L+H * and L*+H were used in different contexts and were phonetically distinct, with L*+H showing later alignment of both tones, lower scaling of L, and higher scaling of H. In addition, there were phonetic differences between the two dialects, with Southern Californian showing later alignment than Minnesotan English. On the other hand, our data indicate that Minnesotan speakers may lack the H * : L+H * contrast: in one of the dialogs, Minnesotan speakers used L+H * irrespective of emphasis, while Southern Californian speakers switched from H * to L+H * with incr...
Cross-linguistically, focus is marked by syntactic, morphological and prosodic means. Languages like Italian or Catalan utilize syntactic changes to mark narrow focus (Ladd 2008 and references therein), while Wolof (Rialland & Robert... more
Cross-linguistically, focus is marked by syntactic, morphological and prosodic means. Languages like Italian or Catalan utilize syntactic changes to mark narrow focus (Ladd 2008 and references therein), while Wolof (Rialland & Robert 2001) and Chickasaw (Gordon 2007) rely on focus particles. Perhaps the most common strategy is prosodic focus marking, which takes many forms, including
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The pragmatic interpretation of Greek wh-questions with different intonation was tested, by asking participants to listen to questions and bet on two follow-up sentences offering alternative explanations on the question’s purpose... more
The pragmatic interpretation of Greek wh-questions with different intonation was tested, by asking participants to listen to questions and bet on two follow-up sentences offering alternative explanations on the question’s purpose (informationor noninformation-seeking). L*+H L-!H% and L+H* L-L% were used and crossed (L+H* L-!H% and L*+H LL%), giving rise to four experiment versions in a between-participant design. Responses from 190 Greek listeners supported previous analyses according to which L*+H L-!H% and L+H* L-L% lead to a preference for information-seeking vs. noninformation seeking interpretations respectively. Responses were affected by both the pitch accent and boundary tone, with the joint contribution being most evident in the “crossed” tunes (L+H* L-!H% and L*+H L-L%). These results also support the notion that accents and edge tones contribute independently to pragmatic meaning, while the successful application of betting as an experimental paradigm supports the idea th...
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A major issue in intonation research is modelling fine-grained variability while capturing significant generalizations needed to guide typology and abstraction. I argue that this remains an unresolved issue because of the assumed direct... more
A major issue in intonation research is modelling fine-grained variability while capturing significant generalizations needed to guide typology and abstraction. I argue that this remains an unresolved issue because of the assumed direct and invariant relationship between abstract tonal categories and F0, which is treated as intonation’s only exponent. New findings and modelling from my own research programme together with documented typological diversity inform a revised understanding of the relation between abstract intonational structure and phonetic realization. This body of work shows that tonal events are comparable to segments: they are realized by a number of phonetic dimensions that exhibit within-category variability and cross-category overlap, and are in trading relationships with each other. Recognizing the variable realization of tonal events requires that we relax the invariance criterion, and accept that (a) the relationship between intonation and F0 is not straightfor...
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Functional Principal Component Analysis (FPCA) was used to model within-category variability and cross-category overlap of F0 features associated with three Greek pitch accents (H*, L+H*, H*+L), and thus disentangle categorical... more
Functional Principal Component Analysis (FPCA) was used to model within-category variability and cross-category overlap of F0 features associated with three Greek pitch accents (H*, L+H*, H*+L), and thus disentangle categorical differences from gradient variability. FPCA is an analysis of curves, returning the dominant modes of curve variation as functions, called Functional Principal Components (PCs); each input curve receives a coefficient for identified PCs, representing the contribution of each PC to that curve’s shape. The three accents, which have distinct pragmatic meanings, were utterance-final in declaratives and elicited from thirteen Greek speakers. PC1 and PC2 captured 87.7% of the data variance. Statistical modelling of the coefficients revealed presence of multiple cues, including overall shape, curve height, and position of curve peak. Though PCs showed cross-category overlap, together they distinguished the three accents, providing evidence that tonal events are real...
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Face-to-face speech data collection has been next to impossible globally due to COVID-19 restrictions. To address this problem, simultaneous recordings of three repetitions of the cardinal vowels were made using a Zoom H6 Handy Recorder... more
Face-to-face speech data collection has been next to impossible globally due to COVID-19 restrictions. To address this problem, simultaneous recordings of three repetitions of the cardinal vowels were made using a Zoom H6 Handy Recorder with external microphone (henceforth H6) and compared with two alternatives accessible to potential participants at home: the Zoom meeting application (henceforth Zoom) and two lossless mobile phone applications (Awesome Voice Recorder, and Recorder; henceforth Phone). F0 was tracked accurately by all devices; however, for formant analysis (F1, F2, F3) Phone performed better than Zoom, i.e. more similarly to H6. Zoom recordings also exhibited unexpected drops in intensity. The results suggest that lossless format phone recordings present a viable option for at least some phonetic studies.
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Research Interests: Mathematics and Isca
Early Spanish-English bilinguals and English controls were tested on the production and perception of negative, short-lag, and long-lag Voice Onset Time (VOT), VOT types spanning the Spanish and English phonetic categories:... more
Early Spanish-English bilinguals and English controls were tested on the production and perception of negative, short-lag, and long-lag Voice Onset Time (VOT), VOT types spanning the Spanish and English phonetic categories: phonologically, negative and short-lag VOT stops are distinct phonemes in Spanish, but realizations of voiced stops in English. Dominance was critical: more English-dominant bilinguals produced more short-lag VOT stops in response to negative VOT stimuli, and were also less accurate than more balanced bilinguals at discriminating negative from short-lag VOT. Bilinguals performed similarly to monolinguals overall, but they produced more negative VOT tokens and shorter short-lag VOT in response to negative VOT. Their productions were also less well correlated with perception and showed more variation between individuals. These results highlight the variable nature of bilingual production and perception, and demonstrate the need to consider language dominance, indiv...
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Two calling melodies of Polish were investigated, the routine call, used to call someone for an everyday reason, and the urgent call, which conveys disapproval of the addressee's actions. A Discourse Completion Task was used to elicit... more
Two calling melodies of Polish were investigated, the routine call, used to call someone for an everyday reason, and the urgent call, which conveys disapproval of the addressee's actions. A Discourse Completion Task was used to elicit the two melodies from Polish speakers using twelve names from one to four syllables long; there were three names per syllable count, and speakers produced three tokens of each name with each melody. The results, based on eleven speakers, show that the routine calling melody consists of a low F0 stretch followed by a rise-fall-rise; the urgent calling melody, on the other hand, is a simple rise-fall. Systematic differences were found in the scaling and alignment of tonal targets: the routine call showed late alignment of the accentual pitch peak, and in most instances lower scaling of targets. The accented vowel was also affected, being overall louder in the urgent call. Based on the data and comparisons with other Polish melodies, we analyze the ro...
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A word-spotting experiment was conducted to investigate whether rhythmic consistency and phrase-final lengthening facilitate performance in Korean. Listeners had to spot disyllabic and trisyllabic words in nonsense strings organized in... more
A word-spotting experiment was conducted to investigate whether rhythmic consistency and phrase-final lengthening facilitate performance in Korean. Listeners had to spot disyllabic and trisyllabic words in nonsense strings organized in phrases with either the same or variable syllable count; phrase-final lengthening was absent, or occurring either in all phrases or only in the phrase immediately preceding the target. The results show that, for disyllabic targets, inconsistent syllable count and lengthening before the target led to fewer errors. For trisyllabic targets, accuracy was at ceiling, but final lengthening in all phrases reduced reaction times. The results imply that both rhythmic consistency (i.e., regular syllable count) and phrase-final lengthening play a role in word-spotting and, by extension, in speech processing in Korean, as in other languages. However, the results also reflect the language specific role of prosodic cues. First, the cues here were used primarily wit...
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his paper presents preliminary ndings from an ongoing project (WUN), which examines intonational dierences in polar and wh-questions across vari- eties of Greek with the overall aim of providing a succinct picture of variation in... more
his paper presents preliminary ndings from an ongoing project (WUN), which examines intonational dierences in polar and wh-questions across vari- eties of Greek with the overall aim of providing a succinct picture of variation in question intonation across these varieties and the role such dierences can play in communicating pragmatic intent. Here we present results from the following varieties: Cypriot Greek, Cre- tan Greek (Heraclion), Corfu Greek, L3 Greek spoken by Roma trilinguals in Thrace and heritage Greek from the USA and Germany. The corpus includes data from a variety of sources including both laboratory and interview speech. These data are compared with Standard Greek (SG) on which extensive re- search exists (see Arvaniti 2007 for review). We investigate in what ways intonation can dier across varieties by examining focus position, the phono- logical composition of the melodies involved and their phonetic realization. In Standard Greek polar questions, focus is real...
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This paper presents production data testing the analysis of Arvaniti and Baltazani (2005) and Arvaniti and Ladd (2005) according to which the default melody used with Greek wh-questions is L*+ H L-! H%(showing a delayed accentual peak on... more
This paper presents production data testing the analysis of Arvaniti and Baltazani (2005) and Arvaniti and Ladd (2005) according to which the default melody used with Greek wh-questions is L*+ H L-! H%(showing a delayed accentual peak on the utterance-initial wh-word, a low stretch, and a final curtailed rise), with! H% sometimes being replaced by L%. Here it was hypothesized that the melodies also differ in pitch accent and are used in different contexts. Four speakers, two male and two female, took part in reading a varied ...
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My active involvement with teaching diversity has been in part a result of my experience at UCSD. I joined the UCSD faculty ten years ago and it soon became apparent to me that despite the evident demographic diversity in the student,... more
My active involvement with teaching diversity has been in part a result of my experience at UCSD. I joined the UCSD faculty ten years ago and it soon became apparent to me that despite the evident demographic diversity in the student, staff and faculty population, there was generally less tolerance for diversity than I would have anticipated, and even less awareness of its effects. As an example, I mention here the comments found in CAPEs (the teaching evaluations of UCSD). CAPE rudimentary statistics and student comments used ...
THE INTONATION OF WH-QUESTIONS IN GREEK ���������������� T�� ���������� ���������� ���������������������� ������ ���������������������� ������������ ������ ���������������������� ������ ������������������ �������������� �������������� ������ ������������������. ���� ������������������������ �����...more
���������������� T�� ���������� ���������� ���������������������� ������ ���������������������� ������������ ������ ���������������������� ������ ������������������ �������������� �������������� ������ ������������������. ����... more
���������������� T�� ���������� ���������� ���������������������� ������ ���������������������� ������������ ������ ���������������������� ������ ������������������ �������������� �������������� ������ ������������������. ���� ������������������������ ������ �������������������� �������������������������� ������ �������������������� �� �������������� ������������������ ���� L*+ H L-! H%. ������ ������������������������ �� �������������� ���������������������� ������ �������� L*+ H ���������������� �������� ������ ������������������������������ ���� ������ ������������������ �������������� ������ ���������������� ������������������������ ����������, ������ L-���������������� ��������, ������ ������������������ ������ ������ ���������� ��������-������������ �������������� ������ ���������� ������ ������������������ �������������� ������ ������������������������ ����������������, ������ �������� ...
This section deals with the representation of intonation���ie the linguistically structured and pragmatically meaningful modulation of pitch���and the formal ways in which intonational elements are said to relate to the segmental string.... more
This section deals with the representation of intonation���ie the linguistically structured and pragmatically meaningful modulation of pitch���and the formal ways in which intonational elements are said to relate to the segmental string. Specifically, section 9.2 briefly reviews the experimental results that led to the development of the autosegmentalmetrical model of intonational phonology (henceforth AM), the main principles of which are presented in section 9.3. Section 9.4 reviews experimental research that addresses several issues ...
It is a well-known truism that no utterance is ever produced in a strict monotone; all utterances, in all languages, show some pitch modulation. Such changes in pitch���impressionistically described as rises and falls���are due to changes... more
It is a well-known truism that no utterance is ever produced in a strict monotone; all utterances, in all languages, show some pitch modulation. Such changes in pitch���impressionistically described as rises and falls���are due to changes in fundamental frequency or F0, the physical property of the speech signal that is determined by the basic rate of vibration of the vocal folds and gives rise to the percept of pitch.
It is generally assumed that speech rhythm is based on timing that is, on durational relations between elements of the speech signal. Here I present research that questions the relation between timing and rhythm and propose a way forward... more
It is generally assumed that speech rhythm is based on timing that is, on durational relations between elements of the speech signal. Here I present research that questions the relation between timing and rhythm and propose a way forward that is of relevance to the cross-linguistic investigation of rhythm. The connection between rhythm and timing is closely linked to the notions of rhythm class and isochrony which have been a feature of rhythm research for over 70 years. Despite the persistence of these views, supporting evidence ...
This paper presents a first sketch of the intonation and rich focus marking devices of Komotini Romani on the basis of an autosegmental-metrical analysis of spontaneous data prosody. Contrary to the ���minimality condition��� that has... more
This paper presents a first sketch of the intonation and rich focus marking devices of Komotini Romani on the basis of an autosegmental-metrical analysis of spontaneous data prosody. Contrary to the ���minimality condition��� that has been argued to prevail in the choice of focus strategies, Komotini Romani often uses several focus marking devices concurrently. Moreover, Komotini Romani adds stress-shift to the list of focus marking strategies available cross-linguistically. Index Terms: focus, accentuation, prosody, Romani
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Bold indicates that audio files are available at http://web.uvic.ca/ling/resources/ipa/members/ . Members may obtain log-on details from the Secretary. ... Gr��nnum, Nina. 1998. Danish. JIPA 28(1/2), 99���105. Heijmans, Linda & Carlos... more
Bold indicates that audio files are available at http://web.uvic.ca/ling/resources/ipa/members/ . Members may obtain log-on details from the Secretary. ... Gr��nnum, Nina. 1998. Danish. JIPA 28(1/2), 99���105. Heijmans, Linda & Carlos Gussenhoven. 1998. The Dutch dialect of Weert. JIPA 28(1/2), 107���112. Gussenhoven, Carlos & Flor Aarts. 1999. The dialect of Maastricht. JIPA 29(2), 155���166. Arvaniti, Amalia. 1999. Standard Modern Greek. JIPA 29(2), 167���172. Arvaniti, Amalia. 1999. Cypriot Greek. JIPA 29(2), 173���178. Ashkaba, John Abraha & ...
The perception of American English epenthetic and underlying stops (as in prin [t] ce~ prints) was examined in a forced-choice identification experiment that controlled for word frequency and familiarity, closure duration and presence of... more
The perception of American English epenthetic and underlying stops (as in prin [t] ce~ prints) was examined in a forced-choice identification experiment that controlled for word frequency and familiarity, closure duration and presence of burst. The results showed that listeners are largely unable to distinguish minimal pairs on the basis of differences in closure duration and the presence or absence of burst; word frequency and familiarity had little effect on the results. Generally, listeners had more difficulty with stimuli with strong [t] ...
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��� Metrics are loosely based on the idea of Dauer (1983, 1987) that rhythm depends on relative consonantal and vocalic variability��� Stress-timed languages are said to show greater vocalic and consonantal variability than syllable-timed... more
��� Metrics are loosely based on the idea of Dauer (1983, 1987) that rhythm depends on relative consonantal and vocalic variability��� Stress-timed languages are said to show greater vocalic and consonantal variability than syllable-timed languages��� In addition, in stress-timed languages vowels are said to take up a smaller percentage of the overall signal, while in syllable-timed languages the overall duration of vocalic and consonantal intervals is more even
��� The results weakly supported the hypothesis that German L2 speakers of English, whose L1 is stress-timed like English, would produce speech with more English-like rhythmic properties than speakers of Italian, Spanish and Korean, whose... more
��� The results weakly supported the hypothesis that German L2 speakers of English, whose L1 is stress-timed like English, would produce speech with more English-like rhythmic properties than speakers of Italian, Spanish and Korean, whose L1 and L2 belong to different rhythm classes. Although visually the data in Figures 1 and 2 provide strong support for this hypothesis, statistically the differences were few and not always in the right direction: ��� VarcoC and VarcoV do not show any significant differences for any pairwise comparisons (with ...