Prosodic Signalling of (Un)Expected Information in South Swedish

Gilbert Ambrazaitis

Linguistics and PhoneticsCentre for Languages and Literature

Pitch Peak Timing in German...

... and English ...

peak timing → pragmatic contrast

How is this pragmatic contrast expressed...

● ...in Swedish in general?● ...in South Swedish in particular?

What is “this pragmatic contrast”?

● Difficult to capture by a single functional parameter (or semantic scale)

→ Start with “expected – unexpected”

The Swedish Word Accents

Example: “Jag har sett anden.”

→ Accent 1: “I have seen the duck.”→ Accent 2: “I have seen the ghost.”

South Swedish:

→ Accent 1: early pitch fall (peak at syllable onset)→ Accent 2: late pitch fall (peak at syllable offset)

Accent 1

Accent 2

General Research Questions

Swedish: Pitch timing is utilized on a lexical level.

● Can it still be used to express pragmatic contrasts – as in German and English?

● If yes, to what degree?● Different capacities for Accent 1 and Accent 2 ?

Original Accent 2

A Pilot Study: Hypotheses and Aims

Aim → a preliminary insight into the prosodic signalling of “(un)expected information” in South Swedish Accent 1 words in monosyllabic utterances

Two competing hypotheses

H1 – Accent 1 pitch fall is always early.

→ word accent contrast preservation (CP)→ Functional parameter “(un)expected” cannot cause a later timing

H2 – No word accent distinction for monosyllabic words.

→ word accent CP is irrelevant→ Timing may be affected by (un)expected information

Interactive Manipulation Experiment

“From Function to Signal”, sorry!

Subjects adjust acoustic parameters themselves until test utterance sounds

“expected”“neutral”“unexpected”

Material: monosyllabic utterances“Röd.” (red)“Blå.” (blue) “Gul.” (yellow)

Procedure and subjects

● Material recorded monotonously at medium pitch level by a native speaker of South Swedish

● Six subjects (2 female, 4 male), aged 30-58; ➔ Subject 4 = speaker of test material

● Subjects used praat manipulation windows

● Instructions in written form, 3 sheets:➔ (1) introduction, (2) instructions, (3) working sheet

Situational Setting

Introduction sheet

Two friends are having a small chat. A: ”By the way, Lasse has finally bought a new car!”B: ”Really! It’s high time! So what colour did he choose?”A: ”Blue” (or ”Yellow” or ”Red”).

Three possible intonation patterns and their meanings were explained by paraphrases:

"Blue, as everybody would have expected." → expected“Blue, isn't it strange?” → unexpected“Blue.” → neutral

Results – general tendencies

● Duration manipulation was used, but hardly systematically with respect to the functional contrast.

● Pitch manipulation was used to distinguish between all three functional categories by most of the subjects.

● Only “unexpected” was assigned more or less the same

prosodic expression by all subjects.

● With some exceptions, only falling pitch patterns were created.

Results – pitch timing

Measurements of peak timing for the falling contours by 5 subjects:→ temporal distance vowel onset – F0 maximum

[ms]

Results – pitch height

Measurements of peak height for the falling contours by 5 subjects:

[Hz]

Example: manipulations for test word blue by one subject

neutral

expected

unexpected

Discussion (1/2)

A preliminary result:

In South Swedish Accent 1 utterances, (un)expected information...

... is not signalled through durational means

... is not signalled through a pitch peak timing contrast

... but more likely through differences in pitch height.

→ Support for H1 (no later timing for 'unexpected')

BUT: pitch fall not convincingly early → no clear case of contrast preservation

→ no support for H2, only partial support for H1

Discussion (2/2)

Refinement of the method● Functional contrasts must be explained more carefully

➔ Concept 'neutral' is problematic➔ Situational setting: who says what (and why and where...) ?

● Other technical solutions?➔ Scroll bars instead of parameter curves?

Open questions / future research● Investigate peak height – unexpected information more systematically

● How unimportant is timing? → methodological artefact?

● Attempt to elicit the pragmatic contrasts

● What happens in Accent 2 words?

● Investigate spontaneous speech data (“from signal to function”)

● What would German subjects do (with German materials)?

Thank You!