Investigating the relationship between accentuation, vowel tensity and compensatory shortening

PaulWarren. Uptalk: The Phenomenon of Rising Intonation. Cambridge, U.K: Cambridge University Press. 2016. xvi + 223 pp. Pb (9781107560840). £17.99.

“…While commentators usually ascribe uptalk to young women, especially from lower social classes, this is not always the pattern found, and for some speaker groups there seem to be differences in the functions served by uptalk. There is evidence that young women use uptalk for floor‐holding more than men do, but with little difference between the sexes for other functions (Ritchart and Arvaniti : 114). Men typically avoid uptalk in contexts where the pattern may indicate subordination (Eckert : 122).…”

Uptalk variation in three varieties of Northern Irish English

“…The data was annotated according to an adapted version of acoustic transcription conventions measuring the speaker's mean pitch in Hz, the highest and lowest F0 values observed in IP-final rises starting from the last stressed vowel [21], [22]. In addition to the annotation of the final contour shape, pitch variations of IP-final rises were measured to investigate pitch changes for instance a sudden increase over the duration of IP-final rise [22]. Pitch excursion of IP-final rises was measured from the nucleus accent to the end of the IP-rise final.…”

“…As we speculate on the influence of SVLR on uptalk in the three varieties, vowel duration and trajectory were measured from the vowel onset (P1) to the vowel offset (P3), providing at the same time values at the middle of the vowel (P2), each part being around 33% of the total length of the vowel. The duration of the final rise is measured from the beginning of the rise until the final peak [22].…”

Non-question rises in narratives produced by mothers and daughters

“…However, as [2] notes for high rising terminals (HRTs, a similar phenomenon in New Zealand English), the hearer can make use of context to infer when the rise indicates a question versus when it does not. This phenomenon, popularly referred to as uptalk in AmEng, has stereotypically been associated with women's speech [3,4,5]. However, it is possible that the difference in frequency of uptalk, or nonquestion rises, in the speech of AmEng-speaking men and women is now leveling out, since [6] found no effect of gender in college students from Massachusetts and Southern California.…”

“…While social factors have indeed been of interest with respect to this phenomenon, little attention has been paid to its use in child speech. Anecdotally, while this speech pattern is often associated with "Valley Girls" [4], it is also referred to as "childlike" speech, though research on children's use of rising intonation when asserting information is limited. Work by [2] investigated the use of rising intonation on utterances that assert (rather than question) information in the speech of New Zealand 4-and 9-year-olds.…”