Integrating the discreteness and continuity of intonational categories

Grice, Martine; Ritter, Simon; Niemann, Henrik; Roettger, Timo B.

doi:10.1016/j.wocn.2017.03.003

Cited by 59 publications

(93 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Following the rise, f 0 remained high until the end of the stressed syllable of the referent and fell towards the end of the word (30 Hz). The rest of the utterance remained low, resulting in a hat pattern, commonly observed for neutral statements in German (Grice et al, 2017).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…With a preceding topic question like "violin?" in (2), statements "violin" and "pear" in (3) and (4) are prototypically realized with different intonation contours in German (e.g., F ery & K€ ugler, 2008; Grice et al, 2017). After the polar topic question "violin?," the utterance "violin" affirmatively refers back to the discourse-given referent.…”

Section: Binary Referential Disambiguationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…An outstanding question, however, concerns the ubiquitous variability in how individual speakers map tonal events onto discourse meaning. A large body of evidence suggests that, even in the absence of contextual factors, speakers' intonational encoding of discourse functions varies; that is, speakers sometimes produce categorically different tonal events for the same discourse function and they sometimes produce one and the same tonal event for different discourse functions (e.g., for German: Cangemi, Kr€ uger, & Grice (2015), Grice, Ritter, Niemann, & Roettger (2017), for English: Chodroff & Cole (2018), Clopper & Smiljanic (2011), Ito, Speer, & Beckman (2004), Pepp e, Maxim, & Wells (2000), Turnbull (2017), or for Berber: Roettger (2017)).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Evidential Strength of Intonational Cues and Rational Adaptation to (Un‐)Reliable Intonation

Roettger¹,

Franke

2019

Cognitive Science

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Intonation plays an integral role in comprehending spoken language. Listeners can rapidly integrate intonational information to predictively map a given pitch accent onto the speaker's likely referential intentions. We use mouse tracking to investigate two questions: (a) how listeners draw predictive inferences based on information from intonation? and (b) how listeners adapt their online interpretation of intonational cues when these are reliable or unreliable? We formulate a novel Bayesian model of rational predictive cue integration and explore predictions derived under a concrete linking hypothesis relating a quantitative notion of evidential strength of a cue to the moment in time, relative to the unfolding speech signal, at which mouse trajectories turn towards the eventually selected option. In order to capture rational belief updates after concrete observations of a speaker's behavior, we formulate and explore an extension of this model that includes the listener's hierarchical beliefs about the speaker's likely production behavior. Our results are compatible with the assumption that listeners rapidly and rationally integrate all available intonational information, that they expect reliable intonational information initially, and that they adapt these initial expectations gradually during exposition to unreliable input. All materials, data, and scripts can be retrieved here: https://osf.io/dnbuk/

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 94%

Section: Binary Referential Disambiguationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Evidential Strength of Intonational Cues and Rational Adaptation to (Un‐)Reliable Intonation

Roettger¹,

Franke

2019

Cognitive Science

Self Cite

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“…Depending on the preceding context question (1) or (2), statements in (3) and (4) are prototypically realized with different intonation contours (e.g. Grice et al, 2017). After a neutral question (2), both subject and object are discourse-new which can be prosodically encoded by specific pitch accents on both constituents (often referred to as broad focus).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg, 1990), recent work identifies intonational form-function mappings as highly variable and probabilistic (e.g. Grice, Ritter, Niemann, & Roettger, 2017;Roettger, 2017). Comprehenders can nevertheless rapidly process intonational cues to anticipate a likely speaker-intended referent even before encountering disambiguating lexical material (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dynamic speech adaptation to unreliable cues during intonational processing

Roettger¹,

Franke²

2018

Preprint

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Human behavior is often remarkably flexible, showing the ability to quickly adapt to the statistical peculiarities of a particular local context. When it comes to language, previous work has shown that listeners' anticipatory interpretations of intonational cues are adapted dynamically when cues are observed to be stochastically unreliable. This paper reports novel empirical data from manual response dynamics (mousetracking) on how listeners adapt their predictive interpretation when some intonational cues are occasionally unreliable while others are consistently reliable. A model of rational belief dynamics predicts that listeners adapt differently to different unreliable intonational cues, as a function of their initial evidential strength. These predictions are borne out by our data.

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Intonation processing increases task‐specific fronto‐temporal connectivity in tonal language speakers

Chien

Friederici

Hartwigsen

et al. 2020

Human Brain Mapping

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Language comprehension depends on tight functional interactions between distributed brain regions. While these interactions are established for semantic and syntactic processes, the functional network of speech intonationthe linguistic variation of pitchhas been scarcely defined. Particularly little is known about intonation in tonal languages, in which pitch not only serves intonation but also expresses meaning via lexical tones. The present study used psychophysiological interaction analyses of functional magnetic resonance imaging data to characterise the neural networks underlying intonation and tone processing in native Mandarin Chinese speakers. Participants categorised either intonation or tone of monosyllabic Mandarin words that gradually varied between statement and question and between Tone 2 and Tone 4. Intonation processing induced bilateral fronto-temporal activity and increased functional connectivity between left inferior frontal gyrus and bilateral temporal regions, likely linking auditory perception and labelling of intonation categories in a phonological network. Tone processing induced bilateral temporal activity, associated with the auditory representation of tonal (phonemic) categories. Together, the present data demonstrate the breadth of the functional intonation network in a tonal language including higher-level phonological processes in addition to auditory representations common to both intonation and tone.

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Integrating the discreteness and continuity of intonational categories

Cited by 59 publications

References 22 publications

Evidential Strength of Intonational Cues and Rational Adaptation to (Un‐)Reliable Intonation

Evidential Strength of Intonational Cues and Rational Adaptation to (Un‐)Reliable Intonation

Dynamic speech adaptation to unreliable cues during intonational processing

Intonation processing increases task‐specific fronto‐temporal connectivity in tonal language speakers

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