Using Rapid Prosody Transcription to probe little-known prosodic systems: The case of Papuan Malay

Abstract

This paper shows how the Rapid Prosody Transcription method (RPT, cp. Cole & Shattuck-Hufnagel, 2016) can be utilized when investigating the prosodic systems of a little-described language. We report the results of a set of perception experiments on the prosody of Papuan Malay, which support the claim made in earlier (production) studies that Malayic varieties appear to lack stress (i.e., lexical stress as well as post-lexical pitch accents). We show that interrater agreement of speakers of Papuan Malay is much lower for prosodic prominences than for boundaries when rating their native language. However, they show higher agreement when asked to rate prominences in German. Most importantly, they seem to make use of the same acoustic cues as a German control group. We therefore conclude that while Papuan Malay indeed seems to lack post-lexical pitch accents, speakers of Papuan Malay appear to be able to perceive the accentual prominences characteristic of German.

Prosodic and Non-Prosodic Cues to Prominence and Boundaries: Evidence from an RPT study in Albanian

“…We bring forth results from two perception experiments on the prosody of Albanian, which provide important evidence in the perceptibility of prosodic and non-prosodic correlates in the language's prosodic system, shedding more light on its complexity. Albanian listeners in this study show moderate to substantial agreement in the perception of both prosodic prominences and boundaries, conforming to what has been found in RPT studies from other languages so far Baumann & Winter, 2015;Riesberg at al, 2020). In doing so, listeners' perception of prosodic structure correlates with both prosodic cues, i.e.…”

“…Possible ways to resolve this issue are to exclude judgments for the last word, as done in previous RPT studies (e.g. Riesberg et al, 2018Riesberg et al, , 2020, or to include excerpts where the end of the audio file does not coincide with the end of an utterance. Alternately, listeners could be explicitly instructed to consider whether the final words of a file might also be the end of a group.…”

Vowel-initial glottalization as a prominence cue in speech perception and online processing

“…1 As Ladd and Arvaniti (2023) discuss, a purely general definition of prominence can be disadvantageous in that it does not facilitate discussion of variation across languages in how prominence is produced and perceived (e.g., Riesberg, Kalbertodt, Baumann, & Himmelmann, 2020).…”

Repetition Reduction Revisited: The Prosody of Repeated Words in Papuan Malay

“…Recordings were made at the Center for Endangered Languages Documentation (CELD) in Manokwari, West Papua (Riesberg & Himmelmann, 2012–2014). Participants received instructions about the experimental procedure before the start of the task.…”