Intonational Primitives

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.