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Intonational and Its Meanings

Julia HirschbergCS 6998

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Today

ToBI intonational frameworkSpoken language and interpretations

Phrasing Accent Contours Pitch Range Amplitude and timing

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To(nes and)B(reak)I(ndices)Developed by prosody researchers in four

meetings over 1991-94

Goals:

devise common labeling scheme for Standard American English that is robust and reliable

promote collection of large, prosodically labeled, shareable corpora

ToBI standards also proposed for Japanese, German, Italian, Spanish, British and Australian English,....

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Minimal ToBI transcription:

recording of speech f0 contour ToBI tiers:

orthographic tier: wordsbreak-index tier: degrees of junction

(Price et al ‘89)tonal tier: pitch accents, phrase accents,

boundary tones (Pierrehumbert ‘80)miscellaneous tier: disfluencies, non-

speech sounds, etc.

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Sample ToBI Labeling

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Online training material,available at: http://www.ling.ohio-state.edu/phonetics/

ToBI/ Evaluation

Good inter-labeler reliability for expert and naive labelers: 88% agreement on presence/absence of tonal category, 81% agreement on category label, 91% agreement on break indices to within 1 level (Silverman et al. ‘92,Pitrelli et al ‘94)

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Pitch Accent/Prominence in ToBI

Which items are made intonationally prominent and how?

Accent type:

H* simple high (declarative) L* simple low (ynq) L*+H scooped, late rise (uncertainty/

incredulity) L+H* early rise to stress (contrastive focus)

H+!H* fall onto stress (implied familiarity)

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•Downstepped accents:

•!H*,

•L+!H*,

•L*+!H

•Degree of prominence:within a phrase: HiF0

across phrases

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Functions of Pitch Accent

Given/new information S: Do you need a return ticket. U: No, thanks, I don’t need a return.

Contrast (narrow focus) U: No, thanks, I don’t need a RETURN…. (I

need a time schedule, receipt,…) Disambiguation of discourse markers

S: Now let me get you the train information. U: Okay (thanks) vs. Okay….(but I really

want…)

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Prosodic Phrasing in ToBI ‘Levels’ of phrasing:

intermediate phrase: one or more pitch accents plus a phrase accent (H- or L- )

intonational phrase: 1 or more intermediate phrases + boundary tone (H% or L% )

ToBI break-index tier

0 no word boundary 1 word boundary 2 strong juncture with no tonal

markings 3 intermediate phrase boundary 4 intonational phrase boundary

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Functions of Phrasing

Disambiguates syntactic constructions, e.g. PP attachment: S: You should buy the ticket with the

discount coupon. Disambiguates scope ambiguities, e.g.

Negation: S: You aren’t booked through Rome because

of the fare. Or modifier scope:

S: This fare is restricted to retired politicians and civil servants.

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L*+H

L*

H*

H-H%H-L%L-H%L-L%

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H* !H*

H+!H*

L+H*

H-H%H-L%L-H%L-L%

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Contour Examples

http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~julia/cs6998/cards/examples.html

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Contours: Accent + Phrasing

What do intonational contours ‘mean’ (Ladd ‘80, Bolinger ‘89)? Speech acts (statements, questions,

requests)S: That’ll be credit card? (L* H- H%)

Propositional attitude (uncertainty, incredulity)S: You’d like an evening flight. (L*+H L- H%)

Speaker affect (anger, happiness, love)U: I said four SEVEN one! (L+H* L- L%)

“Personality”S: Welcome to the Sunshine Travel System.

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Propositional attitude (uncertainty)

Did you feed the animals?

I fed the L*+H goldfish L-H% Distinguish direct/indirect speech acts

Can you open the door?

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But these approaches are limited…. Don’t capture generalizations across

similar tunes Aren’t predictive/explanatory: why does

this contour convey what it does?

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And Other Things Contribute: Pitch Range and Timing (Rate, Pause)

Level of speaker engagement

Hello vs. HELLO

Contour interpretation

Rise/fall/rise (L*+H L-H%): Elephantiasis isn’t incurable

Discourse/topic structure: paratones

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How Do We Study Meaning?

Lab experimentsCorpus-based studies

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Next Week

Read handout/ suggested readings on speech analysis

Identify ~3 topic areas for possible class projects

Turn in a ranked list of 3 classes you’d like to help lead