Pitch modeling : Once the prosodic boundaries are identified, the speech synthesizer applies the prosody elements namely, duration, intonation and intensity, on each of the phrases and on the sentence as a whole. The primary factors that contribute to the intonation are the context of words and the intended meaning of sentences. Jurafsky [4] explains this with the following example. Consider the utterance “oh, really”. Without varying the phrasing or stress, it is still possible to have many variants of this by varying the intonation. For example, we might have an excited version “oh, really!” (in the context of a reply to a statement that one has won the lottery), a skeptical version “oh, really?” in the context of not being sure whether the …show more content…
Intonation is also influenced by the gender, physical state, emotional state and attitude of the speaker. There are two approaches for automatic generation of pitch patterns for synthetic speech. The superpositional approach considers an F0 contour as consisting of two or more superimposed components [34]. In this approach, the generated F0 contour is the sum of a global component that represents the intonation of the whole utterance and the local components that model the change of F0 over the accented syllables. The second approach, called as a linear approach considers an F0 contour as a linear succession of tones. An example of the linear approach to pitch modeling is the Pierrehumbert or ToBI model that describes a pitch contour in terms of the pitch accents [35]. Pitch accents occur at stressed syllables and form characteristic patterns in the pitch contour. The ToBI model for English uses five pitch accents obtained by combining two simple tones, high (H) and low (L) in different ways. The model uses a H+L pattern to indicate a fall, a L+H pattern to describes a rise and an asterisk (*) to indicate which tone falls on a stressed syllable. The five pitch accents are …show more content…
In one approach (O’Shaughnessy [36], Bartkova and Sorin [37]), the intrinsic duration of a speech unit is modified by successively applying rules derived from analysis of speech data. Bartkova and Sorin [37] have analyzed several corpora to study speaker independent intrinsic durations and their modifications to come up with multiplicative rules and factors to modify an assigned baseline duration. In another approach large speech corpora are first analyzed by varying a number of possible control factors simultaneously to obtain duration models, such as an additive duration model by Kaiki [38], CARTs by Riley [3] and neural networks by Campbell [39]. The CARTs (classification and regression trees) proposed by Riley are data-driven models constructed automatically with the capability of self-configuration. The CART algorithm sorts instances in the learning data using binary yes/no questions about the attributes that the instances have. Starting at a root node, the CART algorithm builds a tree structure, selecting the best attribute and question to be asked at each node, in the process. The selection is based on what attribute and question will divide the learning data to give the
In an experiment, around 350 Chicagoans, were recorded reading the following paragraph, titled “Too Hot for Hockey”, this script was written specifically to force readers to vocalize vowels “that reveal how closely key sounds resemble the accent's dominant traits” (Wbez). The paragraph is as follows:
What processes are involved in the attending and understanding of information received on a daily basis?
This chapter focused mainly on misconceptions and attempting to clarify those misconceptions about accents. In the opinion of linguists, accent is a difficult word to define. This is due to the fact that language has variation therefore when it comes to a person having an accent or not, there is no true technical distinction because every person has different phonological aspects to their way of speaking. However, when forced to define this word, it is described as “a way of speaking” (Lippi-Green, 2012, p.44). Although Lippi- Green identified the difficulty linguists have in distinguishing between accent, dialect, and another language entirely, they were able to construct a loose way of distinguishing. Lippi- Green states that an accent can be determined by difference in phonological features alone, dialect can be determined by difference in syntax, lexicon, and semantics alone, and when all of these aspects are different from the original language it is considered another language entirely (Lippi-Green, 2012).
Seikel, J. A., King, D. W., & Drumright, D. G. (2010). 12. Anatomy & physiology for speech,
In the Vietnamese language, there are six different tones that a word may have. The tones may either be high rising, low falling or low rising. There are also high broken tones or low broken tones. These tones all differ in ways where some tones start off as high and slowly end low, or quickly end low. Some tones can start low and quickly end high or slowly end high. However, in the middle of all these
Spanish and English share a similar alphabet, with the Spanish sound system being more concise. Many differences are revealed when comparing the phonologies of the two languages. These differences will influence the speech of Spanish speakers learning English. Speakers may transfer their knowledge of Spanish to English. Understanding these differences is important to the speech-language pathologist in order to realize why some English sounds are more difficult for the Spanish speaker to produce than others (Gorman & Kester, 2001).
A phoneme that may be affected /θ/. For example, a person with a Class III Malocclusion would potentially say “sree” for “three” because they are not able to correctly articulate /θ/ in “three”. With a Class III Malocclusion, the articulation would be off, but speech is likely intelligible.
This process is called deletion of th final alveolar stops and is one of the most distinguishable features. Another feature is pronunciation of 'i'. The lax [ɪ] sound becomes more tensed [i] in such a word as 'living', Tomas pronounces this word as [liβin] instead of [lɪvɪŋ]. This change of pronunciation is due to Spanish phonology because is Mexican Spanish exist only five vowels
Peter R. Mitchell and John Schoeffel. New York: New Press, 2002. 135. The syllable of the syllable. Loewen, James.
Soderstrom (2007) found that ID speech is present in most spoken languages. She also found that ID speech is characterized different properties that include prosodic, phonological, and syntactic properties. Prosodic properties of ID speech include higher pitch of the voice, varying the pitch of one’s voice, elongating vowels, and lengthening the pauses between words in a sentence. Many researchers suggest that these prosodic properties grab the infants’ attention and hold their attention. Phonological properties of ID speech include differences in voice onset time distinction and exaggerating certain words in a sentence. Soderstrom found varying opinions on whether or not the phonological properties were actually helpful in language acquisition. Syntactic properties of ID speech include shorte...
O'Brien, Tracy. "Three Subtypes are Orthographic, Phonological, and Mixed." suite101.com. N.p., 28 Feb 2009. Web. 1 Jun 2010.
Working Paper No. -. 239. The syllable of the syllable. Vol.
Delgado, R & Kobayashi, T 2011. Proceedings of the Paralinguistic Information and its Integration in Spoken Dialogue Systems Workshop. 1st ed. Springer.
1.2. PHONOLOGICAL BACKGROUND. This part of the first section presents the inventory of Hasawi phonemes as a good reference for Results section.
Consonants are described in accordance with three main parameters and any change in one of these parameters can result in a change of the sound and this leads to a change of the meaning of words. It is defined as the point where the airflow is obstructed and where a sound is produced (Ahmed, 2004: 17). The place of articulation (Makhraj) is defined as the point where the sound is produced (Al-Bisher, 2000: 180). There are many terms of the place of articulation as “MaKhraj”, initiator (Al-Mubda), the flow (Al-Majra) which is used by many classic Arab phoneticians. While the modern phoneticians use the terms” the place or point of articulation" and “the location of articulation” (Al- Joburi, 2004: 2-5).