Categorical and gradient effects of information structure on nuclear prominence in American English Eleanor Chodroff, Alaina Arthurs, Priya Kurian, Jonah Pazol, and Jennifer Cole Northwestern University, Department of Linguistics
emotion semantics syntax affect intention pragmatics P ROSODY Pitch accent duration intensity f0
pragmatics phrase position P ROSODY [ JOHN went to an AWE some PAR ty] IP Nuclear accent Prenuclear accent
Information structure N UCLEAR A CCENTS Information structure: relation between information in a sentence and the knowledge state of the participants in the discourse Chafe 1974, Büring 2007
Early work: relatively binary relation between information structure and pitch accent type Given New / Focus L* / unaccented H* / rising Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg 1990, Halliday 1967a, Brazil et al 1980
Empirical studies have revealed a fairly probabilistic relation between information structure and pitch accent type Given New / Focus L* / unaccented H* / rising English: Terken & Hirschberg 1994, Bard & Aylett 1999, Ito et al. 2004 German: Röhr & Baumann 2010, de Ruiter 2015
Information structure may also be expressed in the phonetic realization of nuclear accents Information structure N UCLEAR A CCENTS duration f0 intensity
American English: Effects of focus location and type on duration, intensity, and f0 Breen et al. 2010 Australian English: Lower f0 peaks on given information relative to new information Calhoun 2012 German: Gradient effects of givenness on f0 Röhr & Baumann 2010 Mandarin: Effects of givenness on duration, intensity, and f0 Ouyang & Kaiser 2011
AMERICAN ENGLISH Information Affect structure G IVEN N EUTRAL A CCESSIBLE L IVELY N EW N UCLEAR C ONTRASTIVE A CCENTS Acoustic-phonetic Pitch accent type prominence duration | intensity | voice quality H* | L+H* | L*+H | L*
Information structure Contrastive focus New Accessible Pitch accent type Given L+H* H* L*+H Acoustic prominence L* Duration unaccented Intensity Modal voice
1) I NTRODUCTION 2) M ETHODS 3) M EASURES 4) R ESULTS 5) D ISCUSSION
METHODS 32 native speakers of American English 23 female, 9 male 20 sets of three sentence mini-stories Manipulated information structure (IS) of final object noun in target sentence
METHODS Semantic neutrality throughout the story Third sentence = target sentence: Avoid voiceless obstruents Maintain consistent metrical and syntactic structure ! ! ́ ! !́ ! !́!! det N V det N
Context sentence 1: Our sister Jamie spent all day Saturday in the kitchen. Context sentence 2: She knew it would take hours to make the Given marmalade . She especially enjoyed making homemade Accessible preserves . She likes to make everything from scratch. New Contrastive Our father loved the strawberry jam . Target sentence: Our nana loved the marmalade .
Context sentence 1: Our sister Jamie spent all day Saturday in the kitchen. Context sentence 2: She knew it would take hours to make the Given marmalade . She especially enjoyed making homemade Accessible preserves . She likes to make everything from scratch. New Contrastive Our father loved the strawberry jam . Target sentence: Our nana loved the marmalade .
Context sentence 1: Our sister Jamie spent all day Saturday in the kitchen. Context sentence 2: She knew it would take hours to make the Given marmalade . She especially enjoyed making homemade Accessible preserves . She likes to make everything from scratch. New Contrastive Our father loved the strawberry jam . Target sentence: Our nana loved the marmalade .
Context sentence 1: Our sister Jamie spent all day Saturday in the kitchen. Context sentence 2: She knew it would take hours to make the Given marmalade . She especially enjoyed making homemade Accessible preserves . She likes to make everything from scratch. New Contrastive Our father loved the strawberry jam . Target sentence: Our nana loved the marmalade .
Context sentence 1: Our sister Jamie spent all day Saturday in the kitchen. Context sentence 2: She knew it would take hours to make the Given marmalade . She especially enjoyed making homemade Accessible preserves . She likes to make everything from scratch. New Contrastive Our father loved the strawberry jam . Target sentence: Our nana loved the marmalade .
METHODS 20 unique story-IS pairings per participant, counterbalanced across participants (multiple of 4) Order of stories randomized 4 blocks Affect manipulation: neutral/casual vs. lively/expressive
METHODS Comprehension question following each story Yes-No Q Targeted IS manipulation in second sentence Median accuracy: 97% Min accuracy: 85%
1) I NTRODUCTION 2) M ETHODS 3) M EASURES 4) R ESULTS 5) D ISCUSSION
MEASURES Pitch accent category Duration of initial trochee (sec) Intensity of initial trochee (dB) Voice quality (modal/creaky voice sequence)
MEASURES Pitch accent category H* L+H* L*+H L* unaccented
MEASURES Pitch accent category H* H* L+H* L*+H L*/unaccented L* unaccented
MEASURES Duration and intensity Force aligned speech (FAVE aligner) Manually corrected critical word boundaries Re-ran aligner on corrected final word Obtained duration and intensity of initial trochee
MEASURES Voice quality Manually labelled intervals of modal and creaky voice throughout critical word Analysed simple sequence of voice quality type (none to one transition)
1) I NTRODUCTION 2) M ETHODS 3) M EASURES 4) R ESULTS 5) D ISCUSSION
RESULTS 32 participants × 80 productions = 2560 tokens 218 productions were excluded Median of 6 errors per participant TOTAL: 2294 tokens
RESULTS Pitch accent Logistic mixed model: condition * affect Duration & Intensity Linear mixed model: condition * affect * pitch accent type Voice quality Multinomial logistic model: condition * affect * pitch accent type
H* L*/UA 266 affect 250 247 PITCH ACCENT 243 239 neutral lively 200 187 172 153 count 143 121 103 100 47 45 35 29 14 0 n e w e n e w e e l v e l v e e b b i i v v n t n t i i s s s s i i g g s a s a e r e r t t c c n n c c o o a a c c
H* L*/UA 266 affect 250 247 PITCH ACCENT 243 239 neutral lively 200 187 172 153 count 143 121 103 100 47 45 35 29 14 0 n e w e n e w e e l v e l v e e b b i i v v n t n t i i s s s s i i g g s a s a e r e r t t c c n n c c o o a a c c
H* L*/UA 600 500 DURATION duration (ms) 400 300 200 n e w e n e w e e l v e l v e e b b v i v i i n t i n t s s s s i i g g s a s a e r e r t t c c n n c c o o a a c c
H* L*/UA 600 500 DURATION duration (ms) 400 300 200 n e w e n e w e e l v e l v e e b b v i v i i n t i n t s s s s i i g g s a s a e r e r t t c c n n c c o o a a c c
H* L*/UA 80 INTENSITY 70 intensity (dB) 60 50 40 n e w e n e w e e l v e l v e e b b v i v i i n t i n t s s s s i i g g s a s a e r e r t t c c n n c c o o a a c c
H* L*/UA 80 INTENSITY 70 intensity (dB) 60 50 40 n e w e n e w e e l v e l v e e b b v i v i i n t i n t s s s s i i g g s a s a e r e r t t c c n n c c o o a a c c
H* L*/UA 80 INTENSITY 70 intensity (dB) 60 50 40 n e w e n e w e e l v e l v e e b b v i v i i n t i n t s s s s i i g g s a s a e r e r t t c c n n c c o o a a c c
H* L*/UA 236 234 label 221 VOICE QUALITY 218 fully modal 200 193 modal then creaky fully creaky 150 146 136 count 134 127 111 100 91 58 56 54 53 50 41 34 28 26 11 10 9 5 3 0 accessible contrastive accessible contrastive given new given new
VOICE QUALITY Creak Sequence Female Male Fully modal 13% 15% Modal then creaky 57% 57% Fully creaky 30% 28%
1) I NTRODUCTION 2) M ETHODS 3) M EASURES 4) R ESULTS 5) D ISCUSSION
Highly probabilistic relation between information structure and prosodic realization of pitch accents Given H* Accessible New L* / UA Contrastive
Highly probabilistic relation between information structure and correlates of phonetic prominence Duration Given Accessible Intensity New Voice quality Contrastive
Given information has greater influence on prosodic realization relative to new information, particularly in phonetic realization See also Schwarzschild 1999 Findings in line with idea that aspects of information structure license prosodic enhancement / reduction but do not require it Schwarzschild 1999 Probabilistic relation in production has important implications for the perceptual processing of prosody-IS relations e.g., Fowler & Housum 1987, Rump & Collier 1996, Breen et al 2010, Roettger & Cole 2019
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