Discrete acoustic analysis of intonation patterns in controlled contextual settings
Marc E. Pratarelli · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1986
Acoustical and temporal correlates of intonation patterns in eight semantically distinct sentences made up of the same three words, “Bob bit Todd,” were quantified, verified perceptually, and analyzed statistically for degrees of variability. The phrases consisted of four declaratives and four interrogatives. Three of each group of four systematically varied the stress component on each of the three words. The fourth phrase type was a neutral version with no particular emphasis on any member. A single speaker produced ten replications over three successive days in response to experimenter queries; listener judgments were used to verify the contextual appropriateness in all 80 utterances. Duration, fundamental frequency, and intensity were measured systematically to study both the variation of each and the interrelations between them. Several graphs are presented that depict the movement of the means and standard deviations of the acoustic and temporal correlates, and pitch contours are presented which depict the degree of stability of instability of the correlates. Canonical correlations and regression analysis predictably isolated the magnitude of fundamental frequency stability in the interrogatives but not the concomitant high degree of variability in the same utterances. An index of what “normal variation” may be, and its impact on recognition, is discussed. [Work supported by the House Ear Institute.]