Variability in tonal realisation in Singapore English intonation

Adam J. Chong (1) , James Sneed German (2)

1 QMUL - Queen Mary University of London
2 LPL - Laboratoire Parole et Langage

The intonational melody of Singapore English has previously been described as consisting of a series of repeated downstepped rises over an utterance. The exact nature of this rise, however, differs by phrasal position, with significantly higher variability in contour shape and tonal alignment in non-initial Accentual Phrases than in initial ones. In this study, we focus on variability of tonal contours in utterance-medial Accentual Phrases, examining whether the two main types identified in previous studies (plateaus and rises) represent distinct categories. We then investigate the extent to which factors such as duration and f0 scaling are predictive of f0 pattern selection in utterance-medial phrases. These findings are discussed in the context of the challenges posed by the high variability, both within and across speakers, in Singapore English, and in particular, the difficulty this poses for refining an intonational model of this variety.

Mots clés: intonation; prosody; Singapore English; f0 scaling; duration; downstep

Domaines: Linguistique

Adam J. Chong, James Sneed German. Variability in tonal realisation in Singapore English intonation. International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2019), Aug 2019, Melbourne, Australia. ⟨hal-02139018⟩