Emphasis in English: a perceptual study based on manipulated synthetic speech.

Sophie Herment-Dujardin (1) , Daniel J. Hirst (1)

1 LPL - Laboratoire Parole et Langage

A number of utterances were extracted from a set of recordings of spontaneous speech after listeners had judged that they contained one or more emphatic words. Synthetic versions of the utterances were created, neutralising the variability of segmental duration, pitch movement, pauses and semantic content (by a process of delexicalisation). These synthetic stimuli were then rated by native speakers allowing a comparative evaluation of the contribution of the different parameters to the perception of emphasis.

Mots clés: emphasis; spontaneous speech; acoustic correlates; synthetic speech; manipulations; duration; fundamental frequency; pauses; delexicalisation; semantics

Domaines: Linguistique

Sophie Herment-Dujardin, Daniel J. Hirst. Emphasis in English: a perceptual study based on manipulated synthetic speech.. Speech Prosody, Apr 2002, Aix-en-Provence, France. pp.379-382. ⟨hal-00369977⟩