Suprasegmentals Flashcards by Mathilde R

Syllable

No acoustic or articulatory definition (phonological abstraction that depends on analysis)

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‘Chest-pulse’ theory of syllables

Every syllable corresponds to one contraction of the rib cage
* No experimental evidence

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Syllables in the Orthography

Segment based writing systems were invented only once, while syllable-based writing systems arose independently multiple times, including from segment-based writing systems

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Sonority

inherent loudness of a segment

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Factors that impact loudness

phonological environment, speech rate, distance from source, speaker, etc.

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Sonority tends to increase toward a syllable ______ and decrease afterwards

nucleus

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Sounds from highest to lowest sonority

Low vowels
High vowels
Liquids
Nasals
Fricatives
Stops

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isochrony

relative timing of adjacent units, depends on the language (syllable-timed or stress-timed)

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Syllable-timed languages

each syllable is approximately the same distance apart
Spanish, French

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Stress-timed languages

each stressed syllable is approximately the same distance apart
* English, Dutch

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Pairwise Variability Index (PVI)

measure of the consistency in duration between adjacent units
* Typically applied to syllables

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Pairwise Variability Index (PVI) is ___ if each pair of adjacent units is equal in duration

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The greater the average mismatch in duration for adjacent units, the _____smaller/larger the PVI

Larger (usually less than 1)

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PVI calculation

For each pair of adjacent units, divide the difference in their duration by their average duration and average the result

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Pitch Accent

Distinguishing low and high tone on certain syllables
* phonological property

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Technically, pitch accent languages are ______ languages

Tonal (but often separated from ‘true’ tonal languages)
-Often transcribed the same way as tone

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Stressed syllables can be either:

Accented (high pitch)
Unaccented (low pitch)

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_______ syllables are lower pitch than ______ syllables

Unstressed : lower pitch than stressed syllables

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What do the Tone vs Pitch Accent vs Stress systems have in common ?

They all describe the distribution of phonologically conditioned pitch in the word

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Differences between the Tone vs Pitch Accent vs Stress systems

Stress is obligatory, (min. 1 per word) , and culminative (max. 1)
* Pitch accent is either obligatory or culminative
* Tone in (true) tonal languages is neither culminative nor obligatory

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Lexical Tone is ______common/uncommon

Common (around half of languages)

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Tonogenesis

when a language develops a lexical tone distinction

There are (very slight) correlations between consonantal manner, voicing and the pitch of…

an adjacent vowel

vowels after voiceless stops are _____lower/higher in f0 than after voiced stops

Higher

When a consonantal manner or voice distinction is lost in a language, the syllable contrast can be maintained in ...

the pitch of the vowel E.g. [ba] vs [pa] → [pa] (L) vs [pa] (H)

Stress system is similar to tone system, but ...

tone system has two distinctions : low and high

Intonation

syntactic structure, semantic type, pragmatics, speaker attitude, emotion, etc. as manifested in pitch

Stress

phonological prominence as manifested in pitch

Lexical tone

target pitch is specified in the underlying representation of every word

In all cases, the ___ is modulated by the speaker’s range

How thickness of vocal folds impact tone

Thicker vocal folds = high tone for you will be lower than high tone for someone with thinner vocal folds

Resting Pitch

Depends on vocal fold length and weight * Adult men: approx. 100 – 200 Hz * Adult women: approx. 175 – 375 Hz Children have a higher f0

Phonological tone (e.g. H vs L) is adjusted based on ...

the speakers pitch range

The same f0 can correspond to different ... for different speakers

target tones

Pitch range varies by speaker but tends to be greater for speakers with ____lower/higher resting f0

Higher

Difference between singing and tonal languages

where high and low are depends on the pitch range in tonal languages

tone bearing unit

A voiced segment, probably sonorant, that carries the pitch information (most often a vowel) - Where the tone is realized (host for the tone, not the tone itself)

The more sonorous a segment, the more likely it is to be ...

Tone bearing

Tones vs segments in the mental lexicon

tones and segments are separate in the mental representation and behave independently : in the mental lexicon, each entry has segmental information, syntax, semantics, etc. but the prosody (tone) has to be different from the segment

Because transcription is guided by phonology, we only need __ to describe the languages of the world (infinite pitch targets in reality)

Tone levels

- A language with 3 tones would be described as low, mid and high (terms that are evenly spread out) - More than 3 tones : extra low, low, mid, high, extra high

Tone accents

placed over the TBU

Tone letters

placed after the word/syllable

Traditional notation of tone

Terminology used in historical descriptions of the language * Language dependent : tone 1 for mandarin isn’t the same for other languages * E.g. Mandarin tones: T1(˥), T2(˧˥), T3(˧˩˧), T4(˥˩)

Each TBU is realized with a particular point in the speaker’s pitch range * Single pitch target per TBU

Most register tone languages distinguish between ___ tones

2-3 * Languages with more than 3 register tones are rare

Contour

Contour Tone

Each TBU is associated with a pitch contour - Contour tone : start at one position, end at another position **Multiple pitch targets** : The number of pitch targets per TBU can be 2 or 3

notation of contour tones

Contour tones are just combinations of register tones * HL falling = /â/ or /a˥˩/ Circonflex does not mean low high low, just high low (falling)

Tone on the Spectrogram

Can turn on automatic pitch tracking in Praat, or approximate the pitch by looking at the spacing of striations in the spectrogram or pulses in the waveform

True or false : tonal languages also use pitch to convey non-lexical information

True (pitch targets have to be consistent within the TBU and across adjacent TBUs but can vary beyond that)

Pitch in lexical tone is dependent on...

both on the speaker and the context (only requirement is that high tone should be perceptually higher than low tone and vice versa )

Declination

When the absolute pitch decreases throughout the utterance * High tone at the end of an utterance is usually lower than high tone at the beginning : True for all languages * Corresponds to the cross-linguistic tendency for statements to have falling pitch

Sandhi

Systematic changes in tone conditioned by adjacent tones are called sandhi (coarticulatory effects ) E.g. no adjacent same tones (better for tone 2 followed by tone 3)