The role of word edge tones in Catalan and Spanish Eva Estebas-Vilaplana & Pilar Prieto

1. The role of word edge tones in Catalan and Spanish Eva Estebas-Vilaplana & Pilar Prieto UNED & ICREA/UAB eestebas@flog.uned.es & Pilar.Prieto@uab.es PAPI. Bellaterra, 20-21 June 2005 • Goals of the study • To investigate the alignment patterns of H prenuclear peaks in broad focus declaratives in Catalan and Spanish and clarify the role of word edge tones in the two languages. • A production test examines the effects of within-word position on H alignment and duration patterns in pairs of ambiguous sentences. • Two perception tests check whether H alignment can be a helpful perceptual cue to identify word boundaries between otherwise identical sentences. • Catalan and Spanish prenuclear rises • L consistently anchored with the onset of the accented syllable. • H generally displaced to the postaccentual syllable (Prieto 1995 and Estebas-Vilaplana 2000, 2003). • Recent experiments show that H strictly aligns with the end of the word. Thus, Estebas-Vilaplana analyses H prenuclear rises as sequences of a low pitch accent (L*) plus a word edge tone (H) anchored at the end of the word. Production test Comprà ventalls Sube Melino • GOAL:To examine whether H anchoring is used to disambiguate sentences. If word-edge tones are present, the H should be aligned at the end of words regardless of the number of posttonic syllables. • MATERIALS:20 pairs of potentially ambiguous sentences which have the same segmental and accentual composition and are only distinguished by word boundary location. • CATALAN: words with a pitch accent on the final and penultimate syllables. • Comprà ventalls “s(he) bought fans” fin • Compraven talls “s(he) bought pieces” pen (med) • SPANISH:words with a pitch accent on the final, penultimate and antepenultimate syllables. • Ve bovinos “s(he) sees cows” fin • Bebo vinos “s(he) drinks wines” pen • Sube Melino “Melino Balnco goes up” pen • Súbeme lino “Bring up the linen for me” ante • SUBJECTS:3 speakers of each language read the 20 pairs 4 times (40 x 4 = 160 sentences per speaker, a total of 480 utterances per language). Compraven talls Súbeme lino RESULTS: Example from CATALAN EFFECTS OF WITHIN-WORD POSITION ON SYLLABLE DURATION • Duration of the accented syllable as a function of within-word position • Duration of the postaccentual syllable as a function of within-word position • H peak delay as a function of the duration of the accented syllable • No clear duration effects. Word-final accented sylls. are slightly longer for alll speakers except for AG (Cat.).Significant differences (p=0.004) only found for EV (Sp.). • No clear duration effects. Syllables in word-initial position are slightly longer for speakers PG, PP (Cat.) and TO (Sp.). No significant differences found. • Strong correlation between H delay and syllable duration for all speakers both in Catalan (correlation coef. 0,67-0,82) and in Spanish (correlation coef. 0,42-0,91). • Hs in fin-accented words (e.g. ve bovinos) are less delayed than Hs in pen-accented words (e.g. bebo vinos) for Catalan and Spanish; Hs in pen-accented words (e.g. sube Melino) are less delayed than Hs in ante-accented words (e.g. súbeme lino) for Spanish. CATALAN SPANISH CATALAN SPANISH Example from SPANISH EFFECTS OF WITHIN-WORD POSITION ON H LOCATION Perception tests • H peak delay as a function of within-word position • Clear effects of within-word position on H placementin the two languages: peaks are less displaced in fin-accented words than in pen-accented and ante-accented words (longer H delay). • Differences statistically significant for all speakers (two-tailed t-tests significant at p<0.0005 for Catalan and for Spanish). GOAL: to check whether H alignment differences can be used to identify word boundaries between otherwise identical sentences. CATALAN SPANISH Identification experiment MATERIALS: 10 ambiguous utterances from the production test for both languages. SUBJECTS: 12 listeners for Catalan and 20 for Spanish heard the ambiguous utterances a maximum of three times and had to identify the sentence. RESULTS: low rate of identification for the Catalan sentences (35 to 66% of correct responses) and variable rate of identification for Spanish sentences (25% to 95%). Much better identification of sentences with ante-accented words. CATALAN SPANISH CATALAN SPANISH • H distance end accented syllable as a function of within-word position • All peaks displaced to the postaccented syllable/s. • Differences statistically significant for all speakers (two-tailed t-tests significant at p<0.0005 for Catalan and Spanish). Discrimination experiment MATERIALS: 10 (for Catalan) and 24 (for Spanish) ambiguous utterances in pairs from the production test. SUBJECTS: the same listeners as before heard the utterances in pairs and had to choose the order in which the stimuli were heard. RESULTS: variable rate of identification for both Catalan (30% to 90% of correct responses) and Spanish (40% to 95%). Better identification of Spanish sentences when heard in pairs (except for three cases). • H distance word boundary as a function of within-word position CATALAN SPANISH • Hs in fin-accented words are located after the end of the word. • Hs in pen- and ante-accented words are located before the end of the word. • The data show no strict word-anchoring effects. CATALAN SPANISH • Conclusion: • Catalan and Spanish speakers use H placement consistently to disambiguate different word-boundary locations: Hs are more retracted in word-final accents than in penultimate or antepenultimate accents. • Yet, no strict H anchoring to word-edges found. General conclusions: • H is not consistently aligned with the end of the word, thus no L*H prenuclear rises. • H location is consistenly affected by the position of the accented syllable within in the word. • No clear word-final or word-initial lengthening effects. • Catalan and Spanish listeners seem to use tonal alignment differences due to within-word position to identify words that are ambiguous for word-boundary position.