RISE DYNAMICS DETERMINES TUNE PERCEPTION IN FRENCH: THE CASE OF QUESTIONS AND CONTINUATIONS

Lydia Dorokhova (1) , Mariapaola d'Imperio (1)

1 LPL - Laboratoire Parole et Langage

The present study aims at uncovering the impact of dynamic details of intonational rises sharing the same tonal description but differing in the actual shape of the F0 contour. Two French rising final contours, both labelled as LH*H% in AM, are used to mark continuations or yes/no questions. The hypothesis tested here is that a perceptual difference between the two contours would stem from the particular dynamic characteristics of the rise, notably from the shape of the interpolation between the L and the H tonal targets, which has been noticed to be different between the two (convex vs. concave). We hence created resynthesized speech stimuli, in which tonal target alignment, scaling and segmental duration were rendered ambiguous, while rise shape was modified from concave to convex in two base stimuli. Results of a two-alternative forced choice test suggest that dynamic properties of the pitch rise can alone affect contour identification.

Keywords: intonation; perception; interpolation shape; question; continuation; French

Domains: Linguistics

Lydia Dorokhova, Mariapaola d'Imperio. RISE DYNAMICS DETERMINES TUNE PERCEPTION IN FRENCH: THE CASE OF QUESTIONS AND CONTINUATIONS. International Congres of Phonetic Science ICPhS2019, Aug 2019, Melbourne, Australia. ⟨hal-02476914⟩