Information structure in linguistic theory and in speech production : validation of a cross-linguistic data set

The aim of this paper is to validate a dataset collected by means of production experiments which are part of the Questionnaire on Information Structure. The experiments generate a range of information structure contexts that have been observed in the literature to induce specific constructions. This paper compares the speech production results from a subset of these experiments with specific claims about the reflexes of information structure in four different languages. The results allow us to evaluate and in most cases validate the efficacy of our elicitation paradigms, to identify potentially fruitful avenues of future research, and to highlight issues involved in interpreting speech production data of this kind

Variation in polar interrogative contours within and between Arabic dialects

Quantitative analysis of fundamental frequency (F0) contours in yes/no-questions and coordinated questions, are compared across eight Arabic dialects, based on scripted role play data from the Intonational Variation in Arabic corpus [1]. Visualisation of the F0 contour of all tokens is used to evaluate how consistently speakers produce a typical contour in each dialect, for each question type. A series of simple Generalised Additive Models (GAM) is used to identify dialects which stand out from others in the realization of one or both question types, as well as groups of dialects which might be further differentiated by more fine-grained analysis

Review of Intonation in Romance, by Sónia Frota and Pilar Prieto (Eds.). Oxford: Oxford University Press

The edited volume, Intonation in Romance, comprises eleven chapters: nine content chapters summarise the results of detailed prosodic analysis of intonation patterns across varieties of a particular Romance language, and are framed by an introduction and conclusion by the editors. The languages treated include those whose intonation systems have received much attention (Catalan, French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish), alongside less-studied languages (Friulian, Occitan, Romanian and Sardinian). All chapters used the same methods of data collection and analysis: parallel data across languages was elicited with a common set of dialogue completion tasks; intonation patterns in the data are analysed on the basis of a shared implementation of the Tone and Break Indices (ToBI) model of prosodic annotation, within the Autosegmental-Metrical framework. These shared methods inform direct comparison of Romance intonation patterns and systems, within and across languages, to identify the scope and potential causes of variation, as well as avenues for future research

Acoustic analysis of the Syrian vowel system

This paper describes the vowel system of Damascus Arabic in Syria, from now onwards referred to as Syrian Arabic (SA). We examine the acoustic correlates of SA short/long vowel contrasts, and investigate the status of mid vowels in SA. The goal is to expand on the auditory description of the SA vowel system performed by Cowell [8]. The full set of vowel categories proposed by Cowell were produced in a neutral /hVd/ context by fifteen SA speakers. Quantitative analysis of vowel duration and formant measurements confirms that the vowel system of Syrian Arabic includes the main /i(ː)/, /a(ː)/, and /u(ː)/ short/long vowel contrasts and supports the phonemic status of mid-long vowels /eː/ and /oː/. However, the phonemic status of the mid short vowels [e] and [o] and of schwa was not supported and they are analysed as allophonic variants of their high counterparts /i/ and /u/, respectively

Acoustic analysis of the Syrian Arabic vowel system

This paper describes the vowel system of Syrian Arabic (SA) as spoken in Damascus. We examine the acoustic correlates of SA short/long vowel contrasts, and investigate the status of mid vowels in SA. The goal is to expand on the auditory description of the SA vowel system performed by Cowell [8]. The full set of vowel categories proposed by Cowell were produced in a neutral /hVd/ context by fifteen SA speakers. Quantitative analysis of vowel duration and formant measurements confirms that the vowel system of Syrian Arabic includes the main /i(ː)/, /a(ː)/, and /u(ː)/ short/long vowel contrasts and supports the phonemic status of mid-long vowels /eː/ and /oː/. However, the phonemic status of the mid short vowels [e] and [o] and of schwa was not supported and they are analysed as allophonic variants of their high counterparts /i/ and /u/, respectively

Phonology and intonation

The encoding standards for phonology and intonation are designed to facilitate consistent annotation of the phonological and intonational aspects of information structure, in languages across a range ofprosodic types. The guidelines are designed with the aim that a nonspecialist in phonology can both implement and interpret the resulting annotation

F0 peak alignment in Moroccan Arabic polar questions

This paper contributes phonetic evidence to ongoing debate regarding the position of Moroccan Arabic in prosodic typology, with the aim of determining how phrase-edge tonal events should be represented in the intonational phonology of the language. A salient phrase-final rise-fall tonal event, found in MA polar questions, is used as a case study. We examined the alignment of the f0 peak of this tonal movement, relative to potential landmarks in prosodic structure, in a set of 112 polar questions extracted from a corpus of read and spontaneous speech collected in Casablanca. A comparison of f0 peak alignment in tokens containing an unstressable final CV syllable vs. a stressable final CVC syllable suggests that the rise-fall tonal event observed in MA polar questions is best understood as a pitch accent marking prominence at the phrasal level

Processing of Arabic Diacritical Marks: : Phonological-Syntactic Disambiguation of Homographic Verbs and Visual Crowding Effects

Diacritics convey vowel sounds in Arabic, allowing accurate word pronunciation. Mostly, modern Arabic is printed non-diacritised. Otherwise, diacritics appear either only on homographic words when not disambiguated by surrounding text or on all words as in religious or educational texts. In an eye tracking experiment we examined sentence processing in the absence of diacritics, and when diacritics were presented in either modes. Heterophonic-homographic target verbs that have different pronunciations in active and passive (e.g., برض /daraba/, hit; برض /doriba/, was hit) were embedded in temporarily ambiguous sentences where in the absence of diacritics, readers cannot be certain whether the verb was active or passive. Passive sentences were disambiguated by an extra word (e.g., ديب /bijad/, by the hand of). Our results show that readers processed the disambiguating diacritics when present only on the homographic verb. When disambiguating diacritics were absent, Arabic readers followed their parsing preference for active verb analysis, and garden path effects were observed. When reading fully diacritised sentences, readers incurred only a small cost, likely due to increased visual crowding, but did not extensively process the (mostly superfluous) diacritics, thus resulting in a lack of benefit from the disambiguating diacritics on the passive verb