Browsing by Person "Ladd, D. Robert"

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Alignment of Phrase Accent Lows in Dutch Falling Rising Questions: Theoretical and Methodological Implications
(Kingston Press Ltd, 2005-06) Lickley, Robin; Schepman, A.; Ladd, D. Robert
In the first part of this study, we measured the alignment (relative to segmental landmarks) of the low F0 turning points between the accentual fall and the final boundary rise in short Dutch falling-rising questions of the form Do you live in [place name]? produced as read speech in a laboratory setting. We found that the alignment of these turning points is affected by the location of a postaccentual secondary stressed syllable if one is present. This is consistent with the findings and analyses of Grice, Ladd, & Arvaniti, 2000 (Phonology 17, 143-185), suggesting that the low turning points are the phonetic reflex of a phrase accent. In the second part of this study, we measured the low turning points in falling-rising questions produced in a task-oriented dialog setting and found that their alignment is affected in the same way as in the read speech data. This suggests that read speech experiments are a valid means of investigating the phonetic details of intonation contours.
Effects of vowel length and right context- on the alignment of Dutch nuclear accents
(Elsevier Ltd, 2006-01) Schepman, A.; Lickley, Robin; Ladd, D. Robert
We measured the alignment of f0 landmarks with segmental landmarks in nuclear pointed hat- accents in controlled speech materials in Dutch. We varied the phonological length of the stressed vowel and the right context- (syllable membership of following consonant, presence/absence of stress clash). The nuclear accented word was always followed by an unaccented content word. Based on previous work we expected that the alignment would be substantially affected by vowel length, stress clash and syllable membership, but the only important effect was that of vowel length. We believe this can be explained by the fact that most previous studies have dealt with prenuclear accents and/or with nuclear accents in utterance-final position, whereas we are dealing with nuclear accents that are not in utterance-final position. We also explored the effects of using different quantitative definitions of our dependent and independent variables, and of using Multiple Regression rather than ANOVA, and conclude that our findings are robust regardless of the variables or analysis technique used. An important methodological conclusion from our comparative analyses is that tonal alignment is best expressed relative to a nearby segmental landmark. Proportional measures may also be useful, but need further investigation.
External sandhi as gestural overlap? Counter-evidence from Sardinian.
(Cambridge University Press, 2003) Ladd, D. Robert; Scobbie, James M.
Phonetic effects of focus and ''tonal crowding'' in intonation: Evidence from Greek polar questions.
(Elsevier, 2006-06) Arvaniti, Amalia; Ladd, D. Robert; Mennen, Ineke
This paper deals with the intonation of polar (yes/no) questions in Greek. An experiment was devised which systematically manipulated the position of the focused word in the question (and therefore of the intonation nucleus) and the position of the last stressed syllable. Our results showed that all questions had a low level stretch associated with the focused word and a final rise-fall movement, the peak of which aligned in two different ways depending on the position of the nucleus: when the nucleus was on the final word, the peak of the rise fall co-occurred with the utterance-final vowel, irrespective of whether this vowel was stressed or not; when the nucleus was on an earlier word, the peak co-occurred with the stressed vowel of the last word. In addition, our results showed finely-tuned adjustments of tonal alignment and scaling that depended on the extent to which tones were ''crowded'' by surrounding tones in the various conditions we set up. These results can best be explained within a model of intonational phonology in which a tune consists of a string of sparse tones and their association to specific elements of the segmental string. 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Intonation; Focus; Tonal alignment; Phrase accent; Tonal crowding