The Acoustics of Lexical Stress in Italian as a Function of Stress Level and Speaking Style

Eriksson, Anders; Bertinetto, Pier Marco; Heldner, Mattias; Nodari, Rosalba; Lenoci, Giovanna

doi:10.21437/interspeech.2016-348

Cited by 15 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…In the present analysis, however, only the acoustic properties of the syllable nuclei have been considered. This is also in accordance with the production studies [1,2,3,4]. Fundamental frequency level is here defined as the F0 median in the vowel in order to minimize the influence of outliers.…”

Section: Parameters Used In the Acoustic Feature Analysismentioning

confidence: 56%

“…Several studies of the acoustics of lexical stress in these languages have been published (e.g. [1,2,3,4]). Identical methods have been used for the study of German [5] and Czech [6].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The keywords occur in the three different speaking styles spoken by an equal number of male and female speakers. The number of stimulus keywords in the perception test is 72, representing language (6) sex (2) and speaking style (3), by (2) words in each category. The keywords were selected in cooperation with linguists who are native speakers of the languages in question to ensure linguistic representativity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

The acoustic basis of lexical stress perception

Eriksson¹,

Suni²,

Vainio³

et al. 2018

Speech Prosody 2018

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The present study is the first in a series of studies exploring the perception of lexical stress in a number of languages. As stimuli, key words extracted from recordings in Brazilian Portuguese, English, Estonian, French, Italian and Swedish are used. The data represent male and female speakers in all languages and three different speaking styles-spontaneous speech, phrase reading, and wordlist reading. The ultimate goal of the perception studies is to explore the perception of prominence as a function of the acoustic properties of the stimuli and the native language of the listeners. In this paper we compare the prominence scores assigned to syllables by 44 native Swedish speakers with two automatic methods: acoustic feature analysis using acoustic properties of syllables and continuous wavelet transform. Both methods use duration, F0 and spectral emphasis characteristics of speech signal or a subset thereof. Our results demonstrate a strong language dependency of the way acoustic characteristics correlate with prominence. Correlations between prominence scores and phonological word stress patterns show that the human raters resolve this language-dependency better than the automatic signal-based methods. Also, the signal feature combinations for which the raters' judgements correlate best with the automatically assigned prominence scores depend on stimulus language to a larger extent that on the signal-based method used.

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Section: Parameters Used In the Acoustic Feature Analysismentioning

confidence: 56%

“…Several studies of the acoustics of lexical stress in these languages have been published (e.g. [1,2,3,4]). Identical methods have been used for the study of German [5] and Czech [6].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The acoustic basis of lexical stress perception

Eriksson¹,

Suni²,

Vainio³

et al. 2018

Speech Prosody 2018

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The stressed syllable does not bear any marks of positive prominence in Czech (Skarnitzl, 2018); in fact, some studies suggest that the second syllable is frequently pronounced with higher fundamental frequency (f 0 ) than the stressed one (Palková & Volín, 2003;Volín, 2008). In English, lexical stress is manifested through longer duration, flatter spectral slope and also higher fundamental frequency (Eriksson & Heldner, 2015).…”

Section: Lexical Stress In Czech Englishmentioning

confidence: 99%

Phonetic aspects of strongly-accented Czech speakers of English

Skarnitzl¹,

Rumlová²

2019

Auc Philologica

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This paper contributes to the study of Czech-accented English by examining multiple pronunciation features, both segmental and prosodic, typically associated with or previously studied in Czech English. We analyzed ten female speakers who had been evaluated as having a strong accent in their English, using auditory and acoustic approaches. In the segmental domain, most of the analyzed speakers used Czech equivalents of the English open vowels /ae ɒ/ and tended to pronounce a velar plosive after a velar nasal. In the domain of connected speech, linking was very rare in our speakers, and their pitch range tended to be very flat. The results underscore the fact that the label "strong Czech accent" may, in different speakers, refer to different constellations of pronunciation features.

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“…This way we obtained identical linguistic content in all three speaking styles. For a more detailed description please consult [15,16,17,18].…”

Section: Speakers and Speech Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effect of Language, Speaking Style and Speaker on Long-Term F0 Estimation

Arantes

Eriksson

Gutzeit³

2017

Interspeech 2017

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In this study, we compared three long-term fundamental frequency estimates -mean, median and base value -with respect to how fast they approach a stable value, as a function of language, speaking style and speaker. The base value concept was developed in search for an f0 value which should be invariant under prosodic variation. It has since also been tested in forensic phonetics as a possible speaker-specific f0 value. Data used in this study -recorded speech by male and female speakers in seven languages and three speaking styles, spontaneous, phrase reading and word list reading -had been recorded for a previous project. Average stabilisation times for the mean, median and base value are 9.76, 9.67 and 8.01 s. Base values stabilise significantly faster. Languages differ in both average and variability of the stabilisation times. Values range from 7.14 to 11.41 (mean), 7.5 to 11.33 (median) and 6.74 to 9.34 (base value). Spontaneous speech yields the most variable stabilisation times for the three estimators in Italian and Swedish, for the median in French and Portuguese and base value in German. Speakers within each language do not differ significantly in terms of stabilisation time variability for the three estimators.

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The Acoustics of Lexical Stress in Italian as a Function of Stress Level and Speaking Style

Abstract: The study is part of a series of studies, describing the acoustics of lexical stress in a way that should be applicable to any language. The present database of recordings includes Brazilian

Cited by 15 publications

References 14 publications

The acoustic basis of lexical stress perception

The acoustic basis of lexical stress perception

Phonetic aspects of strongly-accented Czech speakers of English

Effect of Language, Speaking Style and Speaker on Long-Term F0 Estimation

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