Intonational and Its Meanings

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Intonational and Its Meanings

• Julia Hirschberg
• CS 6998

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Today

• ToBI intonational framework
• Spoken language and interpretations
• Phrasing
• Accent
• Contours
• Pitch Range
• Amplitude and timing

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To(nes and)B(reak)I(ndices)

• Developed by prosody researchers in four meetings
  over 1991-94
• Goals
• devise common labeling scheme for Standard
  American English that is robust and reliable
• promote collection of large, prosodically
  labeled, shareable corpora
• ToBI standards also proposed for Japanese,
  German, Italian, Spanish, British and Australian
  English,....

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• Minimal ToBI transcription
• recording of speech
• f0 contour
• ToBI tiers
• orthographic tier words
• break-index tier degrees of junction (Price et
  al 89)
• tonal tier pitch accents, phrase accents,
  boundary tones (Pierrehumbert 80)
• miscellaneous tier disfluencies, non-speech
  sounds, etc.

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Sample ToBI Labeling
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• Online training material,available at
• http//www.ling.ohio-state.edu/phonetics/ToBI/
• Evaluation
• Good inter-labeler reliability for expert and
  naive labelers 88 agreement on presence/absence
  of tonal category, 81 agreement on category
  label, 91 agreement on break indices to within 1
  level (Silverman et al. 92,Pitrelli et al 94)

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Pitch Accent/Prominence in ToBI

• Which items are made intonationally prominent and
  how?
• Accent type
• H simple high (declarative)
• L simple low (ynq)
• LH scooped, late rise (uncertainty/
  incredulity)
• LH early rise to stress (contrastive focus)
• H!H fall onto stress (implied familiarity)

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• Downstepped accents
• !H,
• L!H,
• L!H
• Degree of prominence
• within a phrase HiF0
• across phrases

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Functions of Pitch Accent

• Given/new information
• S Do you need a return ticket.
• U No, thanks, I dont need a return.
• Contrast (narrow focus)
• U No, thanks, I dont need a RETURN. (I need a
  time schedule, receipt,)
• Disambiguation of discourse markers
• S Now let me get you the train information.
• U Okay (thanks) vs. Okay.(but I really want)

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Prosodic Phrasing in ToBI

• Levels of phrasing
• intermediate phrase one or more pitch accents
  plus a phrase accent (H- or L- )
• intonational phrase 1 or more intermediate
  phrases boundary tone (H or L )
• ToBI break-index tier
• 0 no word boundary
• 1 word boundary
• 2 strong juncture with no tonal markings
• 3 intermediate phrase boundary
• 4 intonational phrase boundary

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Functions of Phrasing

• Disambiguates syntactic constructions, e.g. PP
  attachment
• S You should buy the ticket with the discount
  coupon.
• Disambiguates scope ambiguities, e.g. Negation
• S You arent booked through Rome because of the
  fare.
• Or modifier scope
• S This fare is restricted to retired politicians
  and civil servants.

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Contour Examples

• http//www.cs.columbia.edu/julia/cs6998/cards/exa
  mples.html

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Contours Accent Phrasing

• What do intonational contours mean (Ladd 80,
  Bolinger 89)?
• Speech acts (statements, questions, requests)
• S Thatll be credit card? (L H- H)
• Propositional attitude (uncertainty, incredulity)
• S Youd like an evening flight. (LH L- H)
• Speaker affect (anger, happiness, love)
• U I said four SEVEN one! (LH L- L)
• Personality
• S Welcome to the Sunshine Travel System.

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• Propositional attitude (uncertainty)
• Did you feed the animals?
• I fed the LH goldfish L-H
• Distinguish direct/indirect speech acts
• Can you open the door?

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• But these approaches are limited.
• Dont capture generalizations across similar
  tunes
• Arent predictive/explanatory why does this
  contour convey what it does?

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And Other Things Contribute Pitch Range and
Timing (Rate, Pause)

• Level of speaker engagement
• Hello vs. HELLO
• Contour interpretation
• Rise/fall/rise (LH L-H) Elephantiasis isnt
  incurable
• Discourse/topic structure paratones

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How Do We Study Meaning?

• Lab experiments
• Corpus-based studies

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Next Week

• Read handout/ suggested readings on speech
  analysis
• Identify 3 topic areas for possible class
  projects
• Turn in a ranked list of 3 classes youd like to
  help lead