Intonational and Its Meanings Julia Hirschberg CS 6998

Intonational and Its Meanings Julia Hirschberg CS 6998 11/25/2020 1

Today z To. BI intonational framework z Spoken language and interpretations y. Phrasing y. Accent y. Contours y. Pitch Range y. Amplitude and timing 11/25/2020 2

To(nes and)B(reak)I(ndices) z Developed by prosody researchers in four meetings over 1991 -94 z Goals: ydevise common labeling scheme for Standard American English that is robust and reliable ypromote collection of large, prosodically labeled, shareable corpora z To. BI standards also proposed for Japanese, German, Italian, Spanish, British and Australian English, . . 11/25/2020 3

z Minimal To. BI transcription: yrecording of speech yf 0 contour y. To. BI tiers: xorthographic tier: words xbreak-index tier: degrees of junction (Price et al ‘ 89) xtonal tier: pitch accents, phrase accents, boundary tones (Pierrehumbert ‘ 80) xmiscellaneous tier: disfluencies, non-speech sounds, etc. 11/25/2020 4

Sample To. BI Labeling 11/25/2020 5

z Online training material, available at: yhttp: //www. ling. ohio-state. edu/phonetics/To. BI/ z Evaluation y. 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) 11/25/2020 6

Pitch Accent/Prominence in To. BI z Which items are made intonationally prominent and how? z Accent type: y. H* y. L*+H y. L+H* simple high (declarative) simple low (ynq) scooped, late rise (uncertainty/ incredulity) early rise to stress (contrastive focus) y. H+!H* fall onto stress (implied familiarity) 11/25/2020 7

• Downstepped accents: • !H*, • L+!H*, • L*+!H • Degree of prominence: §within a phrase: Hi. F 0 §across phrases 11/25/2020 8

Functions of Pitch Accent z Given/new information y. S: Do you need a return ticket. y. U: No, thanks, I don’t need a return. z Contrast (narrow focus) y. U: No, thanks, I don’t need a RETURN…. (I need a time schedule, receipt, …) z Disambiguation of discourse markers y. S: Now let me get you the train information. y. U: Okay (thanks) vs. Okay…. (but I really want…) 11/25/2020 9

Prosodic Phrasing in To. BI z ‘Levels’ of phrasing: yintermediate phrase: one or more pitch accents plus a phrase accent (Hor L) yintonational phrase: 1 or more intermediate phrases + boundary tone (H% or L% ) z To. BI break-index tier y 0 no word boundary y 1 word boundary y 2 y 3 y 4 11/25/2020 strong juncture with no tonal markings intermediate phrase boundary intonational phrase boundary 10

Functions of Phrasing z Disambiguates syntactic constructions, e. g. PP attachment: y. S: You should buy the ticket with the discount coupon. z Disambiguates scope ambiguities, e. g. Negation: y. S: You aren’t booked through Rome because of the fare. z Or modifier scope: y. S: This fare is restricted to retired politicians and civil servants. 11/25/2020 11

L-L% L-H% H-L% H-H% H* L* L*+H 11/25/2020 12

L-L% L-H% H-L% H-H% L+H* H+!H* H* !H* 11/25/2020 13

Contour Examples z http: //www. cs. columbia. edu/~julia/cs 6998/card s/examples. html 11/25/2020 14

Contours: Accent + Phrasing z What do intonational contours ‘mean’ (Ladd ‘ 80, Bolinger ‘ 89)? y. Speech acts (statements, questions, requests) S: That’ll be credit card? (L* H- H%) y. Propositional attitude (uncertainty, incredulity) S: You’d like an evening flight. (L*+H L- H%) y. Speaker affect (anger, happiness, love) U: I said four SEVEN one! (L+H* L- L%) y“Personality” S: Welcome to the Sunshine Travel System. 11/25/2020 15

y. Propositional attitude (uncertainty) Did you feed the animals? I fed the L*+H goldfish L-H% y. Distinguish direct/indirect speech acts x. Can you open the door? 11/25/2020 16

z But these approaches are limited…. y. Don’t capture generalizations across similar tunes y. Aren’t predictive/explanatory: why does this contour convey what it does? 11/25/2020 17

And Other Things Contribute: Pitch Range and Timing (Rate, Pause) z Level of speaker engagement Hello vs. HELLO z Contour interpretation Rise/fall/rise (L*+H L-H%): Elephantiasis isn’t incurable z Discourse/topic structure: paratones 11/25/2020 18

How Do We Study Meaning? z Lab experiments z Corpus-based studies 11/25/2020 19

Next Week z Read handout/ suggested readings on speech analysis z Identify ~3 topic areas for possible class projects z Turn in a ranked list of 3 classes you’d like to help lead 11/25/2020 20