Title: “Sagging transitions” between high pitch accents in English: experimental evidence
Abstract: The ToBI transcription system for English intonation draws a distinction between two kinds of pitch accents involving local F0 maxima, namely H* and L+H*. In the L+H*, the rise to the F0 maximum begins with an actual phonological target (L), but in the H* the beginning of the rise (here "F0 min") supposedly has no phonological status and its phonetic properties are determined by various contextual factors. The three experiments reported here provide evidence against this latter claim. The experiments are based on the phonetic properties of the medial F0 min in H* H* sequences on English given name+surname phrases (e.g., Norman Elson). In Experiment 1, we show that the F0 min is reliably aligned with the beginning of the accented syllable of the surname, thus correlating with the word boundary distinction in minimal pairs like Norman Elson/Norma Nelson. In Experiment 2, we show that experimentally modifying the alignment of the F0 min in such segmentally ambiguous phrases affects listeners' judgment of which name they are hearing. In Experiment 3, we show that the F0 level of the F0 min and of the second H* accent is affected by the number of syllables intervening between the two accented syllables, in a way that is not predicted by Pierrehumbert's "sagging transition" model, which is central to the distinction between H* and L+H*. We therefore argue that in both H* and L+H* there are distinct L and H targets, and that the two should be regarded as belonging to a single accent category. This analysis makes the description of English intonation more theoretically consistent with that of various other European languages. The analysis also helps explain ToBI transcribers' demonstrated difficulty in making the distinction between H* and L+H* reliably.
Publication Year: 2003
Publication Date: 2003-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 207
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