This paper presents original data in support of a new phonological model of intonation for the Ma... more This paper presents original data in support of a new phonological model of intonation for the Malay variety spoken in Singapore. Adopting an approach grounded in Autosegmental-Metrical phonology, we propose that intonational contours in Malay can be explained in terms of underlying sequences of abstract tonal units (H and L) aligned to the edges and internal syllables of prosodic phrases organized in a hierarchy. Data is drawn from a series of production experiments involving declarative utterances in question-answer contexts, with additional manipulations of segmental composition, lexical structure and information structure (focus). Our results provide evidence for at least two levels of prosodic organization: (i) an Accentual Phrase, which bears a low (L) and high (H) tone at its right edge, and (ii) an intonational phrase, which bears an additional L tone at its right edge. A lexical constraint confines the L and H tones to be realized no earlier than the left edge of the utterance-final word. In narrow focus contexts, the timing properties of the focused peak and its preceding elbow supports the presence of a focus pitch accent L+H*, which triggers downstep in following F0 peaks.
In contrast with stress-accent languages, French does not signal focus through pitch accent assig... more In contrast with stress-accent languages, French does not signal focus through pitch accent assignment, rather it largely exploits phrasing (Féry, 2001; D'Imperio, German & Michelas, 2012). In this study, we used a new experimental paradigm to collect semi-spontaneous data and test the strength of the prosodic boundary located at the right edge of focused elements. French represents an anomaly among the Romance group because stress is specified at the phrasal level and its location is not contrastive. Given that stress is phrase-final, accentuation and phrasal boundaries always coincide. Two prosodic levels are widely accepted for French: the Intonation Phrase (IP) and the Accentual Phrase (AP; Jun & Fougeron 2002; Post, 2000), while recent studies (D'Imperio & Michelas, 2010; Michelas, 2011) provide evidence for an additional level of phrasing intermediate to these two, which appears in unmarked syntactic structures, usually between a subject phrase of at least two syllable...
Much recent work on German and English intonation has addressed the impact of information structu... more Much recent work on German and English intonation has addressed the impact of information structure on prosodic patterns in terms of the focus/background partition. In contrast with stress-accent languages such as Italian, Spanish or English, French does not appear to signal focus through pitch accent assignment, rather it appears to mainly exploit prosodic edge marking for the same purposes. The fact that prosodic phrasing is highly sensitive to focus structure is not only true for French, but also for pitch accent languages such as Japanese and Basque (see Gussenhoven 2004 for a discussion), as well as for stress-accent languages (Beckmann & Pierrehumbert 1986). A previous analysis (Féry 2001) has proposed that French largely exploits phrasing in order to signal focus, and that narrow and contrastive focus “lead to an initial boundary tone, usually high”. Here we attempt to build on Féry’s insight by showing that, while phrasing is one of the strategies that French adopts in order...
In Malay, it has been observed that certain syntactic constructions, such as clefting, are used t... more In Malay, it has been observed that certain syntactic constructions, such as clefting, are used to mark relationships between neighbouring utterances in a discourse (i.e. focus, or more generally, information structure). Such facts raise the possibility that Malay adopts other strategies to mark such relationships. Intonation, for example, is used to mark focus in many languages, including Indonesian (e.g. Manado Malay in Stoel, 2005). A speaker makes a portion of an utterance the 'intended focus' by producing it with specific tonal markers or other forms of prosodic prominence (Ladd, 2008). In certain well-studied intonation languages like English, new information tends to be intonationally marked (i.e. accented), while given information tends to lack such marking. However, this relationship is generally not one-to-one. For instance, when the focused element is a phrase (i.e. larger than a single word), typically only its rightmost constituent receives an accent (Selkirk, 1...
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2005
This study explored speakers' success in acquiring an unfamiliar dialect. Twenty‐fou... more This study explored speakers' success in acquiring an unfamiliar dialect. Twenty‐four speakers of American English attempted to learn Glaswegian, a dialect in which /r/ is produced as a tap. Its closest counterpart is the flap allophone of /t/. The question posed is whether an ...
This paper reports on a speech production experiment that explores whether the Accentual Phrase (... more This paper reports on a speech production experiment that explores whether the Accentual Phrase (AP) represents an abstract level of prosodic phrasing in Singapore English. Specifically, it tests whether the right edge of the AP is associated with phrase-final lengthening, the degree of which can be distinguished from lengthening associated with the Intonational Phrase (IP). Target words were produced in matched sentence contexts in three phrasal positions: AP-medial (word-final), AP-final, and IP-final. As predicted, target words in AP-final position were longer than those in AP-medial position and shorter than those in IP-final position. Analysis of target duration and f0 together shows that AP boundaries are well-discriminated from medial positions. Together, these results strongly support an AP level of phrasing for Singapore English and highlight its role in predicting timing variability.
Speakers are able to adjust their prosodic patterns to approximate those of a different dialect, ... more Speakers are able to adjust their prosodic patterns to approximate those of a different dialect, at least when the dialects involved are phonologically similar [6, 7]. Our study explores imitation across two dialects of English (Singaporean and American) whose prosodic systems are phonologically very distinct. Singaporean speakers were recorded both in their native dialect and while attempting to imitate sentences produced by an American English speaker. Our results show that in spite of the structural differences, speakers of Singapore English are able to rapidly adapt and shift from an edgebased system to an accentual system within the time of the experiment, as well as to finely tune the phonetic detail of their intonation patterns in a way that closely tracked that of the American English model speaker. We further show that the degree of variability in successfully reproducing the target values is dependent on amount of exposure to the non-native dialect.
A number of studies have investigated the phonetic properties of intonation patterns in Singapore... more A number of studies have investigated the phonetic properties of intonation patterns in Singapore English (SE). Additionally, it has been proposed that SE intonation is structured by a level of phonological phrasing above the word called the Accentual Phrase (AP), which encompasses a content word and preceding function words. This study investigates experimentally whether there are any durational correlates of AP boundaries and explores their possible relationship to established F0 patterns. In addition, the sensitivity of F0 movements to lexical stress within an AP is examined. Our findings show that word-final syllables at an AP boundary are marked by longer vowel durations than those in a phrase-medial word, and that this difference corresponds closely with known F0 correlates. Finally, within an AP, stress in a word-initial syllable results in an overall raising of F0 across the entire phrase, although the actual slopes of the contours do not differ.
While previous studies have observed that the specificity effect of voice-onset time (VOT) is med... more While previous studies have observed that the specificity effect of voice-onset time (VOT) is mediated by VOT length [1], the role of the direction of mismatch at prime versus test has not been directly explored. This study addresses this issue through a long-term repetition priming experiment that simultaneously manipulated both VOT length at test (unmodified vs. reduced) and the VOT match status (matched vs. mismatched). The
results show that having an unmodified VOT andmatching the VOT of the study prime were both significantly correlated with shorter reaction times at
test, though unmodified VOTs were identified faster overall regardless of match status. These findings corroborate the importance of the role played by fine-grained phonetic information in word representations, and we argue that the dominance of VOT length can be explained if the malleability of word-level representations depends on the density of speech experiences across the phonetic space.
This study addresses the relationship between information structure and intonation in French. Usi... more This study addresses the relationship between information structure and intonation in French. Using an interactive speech production experiment, we tested the hypothesis that the French initial rise (LHi) is used to mark the left edge of a contrastively focused constituent. Since the occurrence of the initial rise is also known to be sensitive to the length of an Accentual Phrase (AP), we manipulated AP length within the same experiment in a 2x2 design. This allowed us to explore the issue of whether the initial rise represents a true marker of focus in the traditional sense, or whether the association is less direct. The results show that both focus and phrase length make contributions to the distribution of the initial rise, but with no interaction. We argue that these findings are incompatible with a model that assumes a direct mapping between focus and the initial rise, and that the relatively weak association can nevertheless be informative in a model of interpretation that integrates multiple probabilistic inputs to initial rise occurrence. These findings represent the first quantitative experimental assessment of focus realization in French in a non-corrective context, and establish a previously undocumented link between the initial rise and discourse-level meaning.
This paper presents original data in support of a new model of intonational phonology for Malay a... more This paper presents original data in support of a new model of intonational phonology for Malay as spoken in Singapore. Building on the Autosegmental-Metrical approach (Beckman & Pierrehumbert, 1986), we propose that intonational variation in Malay can be explained in terms of underlying sequences of abstract tonal units (H and L), which are aligned to the edges and internal syllables of prosodic phrases organized in a hierarchy. Data was drawn from a production experiment (Hamzah, 2012) involving declarative utterances under different focus patterns in a question-answer context, as well as from story-telling interviews and TV interviews. We find evidence for at least three levels of prosodic organization: (i) an accentual phrase which comprises one or more words and bears an L and H tone at its left and right edges, respectively, (ii) an intermediate phrase, which serves as the domain of catathesis, and (iii) an intonational phrase, which may span the entire utterance and bears an additional H or L tone at its right edge. Differences in F0 peak alignment for focused words support the presence of a focus pitch accent. We outline a series of follow-up studies for extending the model further.
Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, May 12, 2014
The deliberate attempt by speakers to conceal their identity (voice disguise) presents a challeng... more The deliberate attempt by speakers to conceal their identity (voice disguise) presents a challenge for forensics and for automated speaker identification systems. Using a database of natural and disguised voices of three professional voice artists, we build on earlier findings in [Amin et al., 2014] by exploring how certain glottal and vocal tract measures, such as glottal timing (Open Quotient) and vowel formants are manipulated by the artists to create novel voice identities. We also investigate whether there are any features from these measures that can be useful for discriminating natural and disguised voices. As expected, variation in Open Quotient was speaker-dependent, and corresponded closely to social attributes (i.e., age) of the voice identities involved. By modelling the overall variability of speakers in the vowel space, we propose a new method for automatically classifying natural and disguised voices. The proposed method is found to outperform several state-of-the-art methods.
In an experiment spanning a week, American English speakers imitated a Glaswegian (Scottish) Engl... more In an experiment spanning a week, American English speakers imitated a Glaswegian (Scottish) English speaker. The target sounds were allophones of /t/ and /r/, as the Glaswegian speaker aspirated word-medial /t/ but pronounced /r/ as a flap initially and medially. This experiment therefore explored (a) whether speakers could learn to reassign a sound they already produce (flap) to a different phoneme, and (b) whether they could learn to reliably produce aspirated /t/ in an unusual phonological context. Speakers appeared to learn systematically, as they could generalize to words which they had never heard the Glaswegian speaker pronounce. The pattern for /t/ was adopted and generalized with high overall reliability (96%). For flap, there was a mix of categorical learning, with the allophone simply switching to a different use, and parametric approximations of the “new” sound. The positional context was clearly important, as flaps were produced less successfully when word-initial. And although there was variety in success rates, all speakers learned to produce a flap for /r/ at least some of the time and retained this learning over a week’s time. These effects are most easily explained in a hybrid of neo-generative and exemplar models of speech perception and production.
Adaptation to an unfamiliar dialect of one’s native language presents a special case for prosodic... more Adaptation to an unfamiliar dialect of one’s native language presents a special case for prosodic learning, since most other aspects of the grammar are held constant. This study explores the representation of two dimensions of tune through a series of experimental tasks in which speakers of American English attempt to directly imitate and then generalize the dialectal features of a native speaker of Glasgow English. The results show that speakers are able to modify both f0 peak timing and f0 excursion in order to approximate the target dialect, and that they do so both during direct imitation and when generalizing to new sentences. The findings suggest that peak timing and excursion are not only represented differently, but that learning progresses differently for the two dimensions in going from direct imitation to generalization.
This study addresses the relationship between information structure and intonation in French. Mor... more This study addresses the relationship between information structure and intonation in French. More specifically, it tests whether phrase initial rises (LHi) are associated with the left edge of contrastively focused constituents in whinterrogatives. Since LHi distribution has also been correlated with length, the study further examines the relative contribution of constraints operating at two distinct levels: information structure and phonological structure. The results show that each set of constraints makes an independent contribution to the occurrence of LHi, but with no interaction. In other words, LHi is more likely to occur at the left edge of a contrastive focus domain, and more likely to occur in longer phrases, though phrase length does not influence the extent to which LHi marks focus. The findings of this study represent the first quantitative assessment of focus realization in French in a non-corrective context, and establish a previously undocumented link between LHi and discourse-level meaning.
This paper presents original data in support of a new phonological model of intonation for the Ma... more This paper presents original data in support of a new phonological model of intonation for the Malay variety spoken in Singapore. Adopting an approach grounded in Autosegmental-Metrical phonology, we propose that intonational contours in Malay can be explained in terms of underlying sequences of abstract tonal units (H and L) aligned to the edges and internal syllables of prosodic phrases organized in a hierarchy. Data is drawn from a series of production experiments involving declarative utterances in question-answer contexts, with additional manipulations of segmental composition, lexical structure and information structure (focus). Our results provide evidence for at least two levels of prosodic organization: (i) an Accentual Phrase, which bears a low (L) and high (H) tone at its right edge, and (ii) an intonational phrase, which bears an additional L tone at its right edge. A lexical constraint confines the L and H tones to be realized no earlier than the left edge of the utterance-final word. In narrow focus contexts, the timing properties of the focused peak and its preceding elbow supports the presence of a focus pitch accent L+H*, which triggers downstep in following F0 peaks.
In contrast with stress-accent languages, French does not signal focus through pitch accent assig... more In contrast with stress-accent languages, French does not signal focus through pitch accent assignment, rather it largely exploits phrasing (Féry, 2001; D'Imperio, German & Michelas, 2012). In this study, we used a new experimental paradigm to collect semi-spontaneous data and test the strength of the prosodic boundary located at the right edge of focused elements. French represents an anomaly among the Romance group because stress is specified at the phrasal level and its location is not contrastive. Given that stress is phrase-final, accentuation and phrasal boundaries always coincide. Two prosodic levels are widely accepted for French: the Intonation Phrase (IP) and the Accentual Phrase (AP; Jun & Fougeron 2002; Post, 2000), while recent studies (D'Imperio & Michelas, 2010; Michelas, 2011) provide evidence for an additional level of phrasing intermediate to these two, which appears in unmarked syntactic structures, usually between a subject phrase of at least two syllable...
Much recent work on German and English intonation has addressed the impact of information structu... more Much recent work on German and English intonation has addressed the impact of information structure on prosodic patterns in terms of the focus/background partition. In contrast with stress-accent languages such as Italian, Spanish or English, French does not appear to signal focus through pitch accent assignment, rather it appears to mainly exploit prosodic edge marking for the same purposes. The fact that prosodic phrasing is highly sensitive to focus structure is not only true for French, but also for pitch accent languages such as Japanese and Basque (see Gussenhoven 2004 for a discussion), as well as for stress-accent languages (Beckmann & Pierrehumbert 1986). A previous analysis (Féry 2001) has proposed that French largely exploits phrasing in order to signal focus, and that narrow and contrastive focus “lead to an initial boundary tone, usually high”. Here we attempt to build on Féry’s insight by showing that, while phrasing is one of the strategies that French adopts in order...
In Malay, it has been observed that certain syntactic constructions, such as clefting, are used t... more In Malay, it has been observed that certain syntactic constructions, such as clefting, are used to mark relationships between neighbouring utterances in a discourse (i.e. focus, or more generally, information structure). Such facts raise the possibility that Malay adopts other strategies to mark such relationships. Intonation, for example, is used to mark focus in many languages, including Indonesian (e.g. Manado Malay in Stoel, 2005). A speaker makes a portion of an utterance the 'intended focus' by producing it with specific tonal markers or other forms of prosodic prominence (Ladd, 2008). In certain well-studied intonation languages like English, new information tends to be intonationally marked (i.e. accented), while given information tends to lack such marking. However, this relationship is generally not one-to-one. For instance, when the focused element is a phrase (i.e. larger than a single word), typically only its rightmost constituent receives an accent (Selkirk, 1...
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2005
This study explored speakers' success in acquiring an unfamiliar dialect. Twenty‐fou... more This study explored speakers' success in acquiring an unfamiliar dialect. Twenty‐four speakers of American English attempted to learn Glaswegian, a dialect in which /r/ is produced as a tap. Its closest counterpart is the flap allophone of /t/. The question posed is whether an ...
This paper reports on a speech production experiment that explores whether the Accentual Phrase (... more This paper reports on a speech production experiment that explores whether the Accentual Phrase (AP) represents an abstract level of prosodic phrasing in Singapore English. Specifically, it tests whether the right edge of the AP is associated with phrase-final lengthening, the degree of which can be distinguished from lengthening associated with the Intonational Phrase (IP). Target words were produced in matched sentence contexts in three phrasal positions: AP-medial (word-final), AP-final, and IP-final. As predicted, target words in AP-final position were longer than those in AP-medial position and shorter than those in IP-final position. Analysis of target duration and f0 together shows that AP boundaries are well-discriminated from medial positions. Together, these results strongly support an AP level of phrasing for Singapore English and highlight its role in predicting timing variability.
Speakers are able to adjust their prosodic patterns to approximate those of a different dialect, ... more Speakers are able to adjust their prosodic patterns to approximate those of a different dialect, at least when the dialects involved are phonologically similar [6, 7]. Our study explores imitation across two dialects of English (Singaporean and American) whose prosodic systems are phonologically very distinct. Singaporean speakers were recorded both in their native dialect and while attempting to imitate sentences produced by an American English speaker. Our results show that in spite of the structural differences, speakers of Singapore English are able to rapidly adapt and shift from an edgebased system to an accentual system within the time of the experiment, as well as to finely tune the phonetic detail of their intonation patterns in a way that closely tracked that of the American English model speaker. We further show that the degree of variability in successfully reproducing the target values is dependent on amount of exposure to the non-native dialect.
A number of studies have investigated the phonetic properties of intonation patterns in Singapore... more A number of studies have investigated the phonetic properties of intonation patterns in Singapore English (SE). Additionally, it has been proposed that SE intonation is structured by a level of phonological phrasing above the word called the Accentual Phrase (AP), which encompasses a content word and preceding function words. This study investigates experimentally whether there are any durational correlates of AP boundaries and explores their possible relationship to established F0 patterns. In addition, the sensitivity of F0 movements to lexical stress within an AP is examined. Our findings show that word-final syllables at an AP boundary are marked by longer vowel durations than those in a phrase-medial word, and that this difference corresponds closely with known F0 correlates. Finally, within an AP, stress in a word-initial syllable results in an overall raising of F0 across the entire phrase, although the actual slopes of the contours do not differ.
While previous studies have observed that the specificity effect of voice-onset time (VOT) is med... more While previous studies have observed that the specificity effect of voice-onset time (VOT) is mediated by VOT length [1], the role of the direction of mismatch at prime versus test has not been directly explored. This study addresses this issue through a long-term repetition priming experiment that simultaneously manipulated both VOT length at test (unmodified vs. reduced) and the VOT match status (matched vs. mismatched). The
results show that having an unmodified VOT andmatching the VOT of the study prime were both significantly correlated with shorter reaction times at
test, though unmodified VOTs were identified faster overall regardless of match status. These findings corroborate the importance of the role played by fine-grained phonetic information in word representations, and we argue that the dominance of VOT length can be explained if the malleability of word-level representations depends on the density of speech experiences across the phonetic space.
This study addresses the relationship between information structure and intonation in French. Usi... more This study addresses the relationship between information structure and intonation in French. Using an interactive speech production experiment, we tested the hypothesis that the French initial rise (LHi) is used to mark the left edge of a contrastively focused constituent. Since the occurrence of the initial rise is also known to be sensitive to the length of an Accentual Phrase (AP), we manipulated AP length within the same experiment in a 2x2 design. This allowed us to explore the issue of whether the initial rise represents a true marker of focus in the traditional sense, or whether the association is less direct. The results show that both focus and phrase length make contributions to the distribution of the initial rise, but with no interaction. We argue that these findings are incompatible with a model that assumes a direct mapping between focus and the initial rise, and that the relatively weak association can nevertheless be informative in a model of interpretation that integrates multiple probabilistic inputs to initial rise occurrence. These findings represent the first quantitative experimental assessment of focus realization in French in a non-corrective context, and establish a previously undocumented link between the initial rise and discourse-level meaning.
This paper presents original data in support of a new model of intonational phonology for Malay a... more This paper presents original data in support of a new model of intonational phonology for Malay as spoken in Singapore. Building on the Autosegmental-Metrical approach (Beckman & Pierrehumbert, 1986), we propose that intonational variation in Malay can be explained in terms of underlying sequences of abstract tonal units (H and L), which are aligned to the edges and internal syllables of prosodic phrases organized in a hierarchy. Data was drawn from a production experiment (Hamzah, 2012) involving declarative utterances under different focus patterns in a question-answer context, as well as from story-telling interviews and TV interviews. We find evidence for at least three levels of prosodic organization: (i) an accentual phrase which comprises one or more words and bears an L and H tone at its left and right edges, respectively, (ii) an intermediate phrase, which serves as the domain of catathesis, and (iii) an intonational phrase, which may span the entire utterance and bears an additional H or L tone at its right edge. Differences in F0 peak alignment for focused words support the presence of a focus pitch accent. We outline a series of follow-up studies for extending the model further.
Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, May 12, 2014
The deliberate attempt by speakers to conceal their identity (voice disguise) presents a challeng... more The deliberate attempt by speakers to conceal their identity (voice disguise) presents a challenge for forensics and for automated speaker identification systems. Using a database of natural and disguised voices of three professional voice artists, we build on earlier findings in [Amin et al., 2014] by exploring how certain glottal and vocal tract measures, such as glottal timing (Open Quotient) and vowel formants are manipulated by the artists to create novel voice identities. We also investigate whether there are any features from these measures that can be useful for discriminating natural and disguised voices. As expected, variation in Open Quotient was speaker-dependent, and corresponded closely to social attributes (i.e., age) of the voice identities involved. By modelling the overall variability of speakers in the vowel space, we propose a new method for automatically classifying natural and disguised voices. The proposed method is found to outperform several state-of-the-art methods.
In an experiment spanning a week, American English speakers imitated a Glaswegian (Scottish) Engl... more In an experiment spanning a week, American English speakers imitated a Glaswegian (Scottish) English speaker. The target sounds were allophones of /t/ and /r/, as the Glaswegian speaker aspirated word-medial /t/ but pronounced /r/ as a flap initially and medially. This experiment therefore explored (a) whether speakers could learn to reassign a sound they already produce (flap) to a different phoneme, and (b) whether they could learn to reliably produce aspirated /t/ in an unusual phonological context. Speakers appeared to learn systematically, as they could generalize to words which they had never heard the Glaswegian speaker pronounce. The pattern for /t/ was adopted and generalized with high overall reliability (96%). For flap, there was a mix of categorical learning, with the allophone simply switching to a different use, and parametric approximations of the “new” sound. The positional context was clearly important, as flaps were produced less successfully when word-initial. And although there was variety in success rates, all speakers learned to produce a flap for /r/ at least some of the time and retained this learning over a week’s time. These effects are most easily explained in a hybrid of neo-generative and exemplar models of speech perception and production.
Adaptation to an unfamiliar dialect of one’s native language presents a special case for prosodic... more Adaptation to an unfamiliar dialect of one’s native language presents a special case for prosodic learning, since most other aspects of the grammar are held constant. This study explores the representation of two dimensions of tune through a series of experimental tasks in which speakers of American English attempt to directly imitate and then generalize the dialectal features of a native speaker of Glasgow English. The results show that speakers are able to modify both f0 peak timing and f0 excursion in order to approximate the target dialect, and that they do so both during direct imitation and when generalizing to new sentences. The findings suggest that peak timing and excursion are not only represented differently, but that learning progresses differently for the two dimensions in going from direct imitation to generalization.
This study addresses the relationship between information structure and intonation in French. Mor... more This study addresses the relationship between information structure and intonation in French. More specifically, it tests whether phrase initial rises (LHi) are associated with the left edge of contrastively focused constituents in whinterrogatives. Since LHi distribution has also been correlated with length, the study further examines the relative contribution of constraints operating at two distinct levels: information structure and phonological structure. The results show that each set of constraints makes an independent contribution to the occurrence of LHi, but with no interaction. In other words, LHi is more likely to occur at the left edge of a contrastive focus domain, and more likely to occur in longer phrases, though phrase length does not influence the extent to which LHi marks focus. The findings of this study represent the first quantitative assessment of focus realization in French in a non-corrective context, and establish a previously undocumented link between LHi and discourse-level meaning.
This paper presents original data in support of a new model of intonational phonology for Malay a... more This paper presents original data in support of a new model of intonational phonology for Malay as spoken in Singapore. Building on the Autosegmental-Metrical approach (Beckman & Pierrehumbert, 1986), we propose that intonational variation in Malay can be explained in terms of underlying sequences of abstract tonal units (H and L), which are aligned to the edges and internal syllables of prosodic phrases organized in a hierarchy. Data was drawn froma production experiment (Hamzah, 2012) involving declarative utterances under different focus patterns in a question-answer context, as well as from story-telling interviews and TV interviews. We find evidence for at least three levels of prosodic organization: (i) an accentual phrase which comprises one or more words and bears an L and H tone at its left and right edges, respectively, (ii) an intermediate phrase, which serves as the domain of catathesis, and (iii) an intonational phrase, which may span the entire utterance and bears an additional H or L tone at its right edge. Differences in F0 peak alignment for focused words support the presence of a focus pitch accent. We outline a series of follow-up studies for extending the model further.
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results show that having an unmodified VOT andmatching the VOT of the study prime were both significantly correlated with shorter reaction times at
test, though unmodified VOTs were identified faster overall regardless of match status. These findings corroborate the importance of the role played by fine-grained phonetic information in word representations, and we argue that the dominance of VOT length can be explained if the malleability of word-level representations depends on the density of speech experiences across the phonetic space.
results show that having an unmodified VOT andmatching the VOT of the study prime were both significantly correlated with shorter reaction times at
test, though unmodified VOTs were identified faster overall regardless of match status. These findings corroborate the importance of the role played by fine-grained phonetic information in word representations, and we argue that the dominance of VOT length can be explained if the malleability of word-level representations depends on the density of speech experiences across the phonetic space.