Sunday, July 29, 2007
Abstract: The microprosody of [voice] in infant- and adult-directed speech
The acoustic cues for [voice] perception in syllable-initial stops have been shown to be predominated by the timing of voicing relative to the release of consonant closure (VOT or voice-onset time). While languages utilize VOT as the primary articulatory signature of voicing distinctions, fundamental frequency (f0) of the post-consonantal vocalic gesture has been shown to covary with VOT. Vowels following voiceless stops generally have high, falling f0 contours and low-rising f0 contours following voiced stops. Adult listeners correspondingly report CV syllables with ambiguous VOT values as voiceless when the vowel has a high, falling f0, and voiced when f0 is low and rising. The present study investigates the microprosody of voicing in infant-directed speech (IDS), which has been shown to support phonetic category formation in development. VOT/f0 covariation in the IDS of four mothers from the Brent corpus is compared to the adult-directed speech of four women from the Buckeye corpus of adult spontaneous speech. Results are discussed in light of recent research into the role of IDS in providing robust cues for phonological learning in infancy.
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2 comments:
Hey Chandan,
I was wondering why you chose 'microprosody' rather than cue-weighting or acoustic correlates for your title. Is it because you don't want to make any assumptions about what speakers/listeners rely on? Or because you want to stress the fact that VOT and f0 go beyond the segment itself, and thus want to give them a more ample domain? If the latter, were you thinking of relating your findings to Susan's suggestion that there are different types of cues?
There is pretty good evidence that VOT provides the "bulk" evidence for [voice] judgments in adults. That is, listeners "weight" VOT far more heavily than pitch. The "micro" in the title points up the fine-grained phonetic cues available to the listener (see Sarah Hawkins' recent stuff) that aren't necessarily driving perception. I suppose I could have used "cue-weighting" in the title, but I felt the term demanded too much in terms of precise effects of varying the co-varying cues in stimuli I am currently using with infants. "Microprosody" captured my intent without making the perception part of my project untenable.
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