Intonational Structure and Word Segmentation in French: Findings and Perspectives

1. Intonational Structure and Word Segmentation in French: Findings and Perspectives Pauline Welby Institut de la Communication Parlée CNRS UMR 5009, INPG Université Stendhal {welby}@icp.inpg.fr

2. Joint work with… Segmental anchorage Hélène Lœvenbruck, ICP Lombard effect Lucie Bailly, Maëva Garnier, Laboratoire d’Acoustique Musicale, Paris; Hélène Lœvenbruck, Marion Dohen, ICP/ATR Articulatory alignment Hélène Lœvenbruck, ICP; Mariapaola D’Imperio, Robert Espesser, Caroline Menezes, Noël Nguyen, Laboratoire Parole et Langage, Aix-en-Provence Elbow detection methods Hélène Lœvenbruck, ICP; Pilar Prieto, Maria del Mar Vanrell Bosch, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Time course of cues to word segmentation Hélène Lœvenbruck, ICP; Kiwako Ito, Shari Speer, Ohio State, Columbus; Anne Christophe, Savita Bernal, Séverine Millotte, Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psychologie, Paris; Elsa Spinelli, Anne-Laure Schaegis, Laboratoire de Psychologie et NeuroCognition, Grenoble.

3. production experiments new hypotheses new hypotheses psycho- linguistics phonetics/ phonology perception experiments An integrated approach

4. a. H H F0 (Hz) earlyrise late rise late rise L L [ ] [ ] AP AP H b. elbow elbow L L F0 (Hz) [ ] [ ] AP AP Overview of French prosody • other patterns possible • no difference in meaning

5. tonal scaling tonal alignment French intonational phonology: Some research questions • What are the primitives? • holistic units (superpositional model) • targets (autosegmental-metrical model) • Same structure for both early and late rise? + slope “The realization process does not make arbitrary use of the information in the phonological representation; instead, it uses the information in particular ways, which give rise to generalizations supporting one sort of representation over others.” Pierrehumbert & Beckman (1988)

6. 1st or 2nd content word earlyrise late rise last syllable of AP F0 (Hz) elbow [ ] [ ] penultimate or last syllable function word/ content word boundary Some observations on alignment H2 H1 L2 L1 AP AP

7. H2 H2 H1 L2 L2 L1 L1 H2 H1 AM: L1 early rise + high plateau SM: early rise + fall + late rise AM: SM: low plateau + late rise Some observations on alignment • Across AP patterns: • turning points preserved; not global shapes, slope • Autosegmental-metrical model (AM): • each tone has an individual existence • F0 shape depends on which tones are present • Superpositional model (SM): • loses elements common to different AP patterns

8. Rc F Ri H2 H1 L1 L2 Some observations on scaling Continuum between clear fall and plateau… … not dichotomy predicted by superpositional models Attributes: Ri = early rise S = sustaining F = fall Rc = continuation rise … P1 = Ri + F + L (Vaissière and colleagues 1970s)

9. H2 H1 L2 L1 An autosegmental-metrical model of French intonation bitonal phrase accent bitonal pitch accent • cf. Jun & Fougeron 2002 • early and late rises structurally different • (contra DiCristo and Hirst) • not traditional AM bitonal units: no “invariant interval” • (contra Pierrehumbert 1980, Pierrehumbert & Beckman 1988) • challenge to segmental anchoring hypothesis • (Arvaniti et al. 1998, Ladd et al. 1999, 2000) • problematic for accounts in which pitch rises and falls are timed with respect to syllables (e.g. Xu 1998)

10. Segmental anchoring hypothesis Universal claims about intonational structure (Arvaniti et al. 1998, Ladd et al. 1999, 2000) • “…both the beginning and the end of the f0 movement can and must be precisely specified [with respect to segmental landmarks]” (Ladd et al. 2000) • Invariant scaling irrespective of rate • Invariant anchoring irrespective of syllable structure

11. H2 alignment predicted by segmental anchoring Syllabic structure does not affect H2 alignment

12. H2 alignment observed

13. segmental anchor AP

14. segmental anchorage AP

15. A elbow elbow Lombard Effect • Speech changes in noise: intensity, duration, F0, etc. • Intonation: • Increase in mean F0, F0 range • Few studies on alignment, scaling of individual tones • Articulatory changes : • Labiometric measurements of video data • Increase in maximum lip area in noise H H 275 375 noise silence H L H F0 (Hz) F0 (Hz) L L L 175 175 (LIPTRAK)

16. Methods for detecting F0 elbows • Hand labelling of F0 minima (Arvaniti, Ladd and colleagues) • But: - start of rise not always at a minimum - not always a clear angle • Automatic methods • Maximum acceleration (Xu 1998) • Line fitting(Pierrehumbert & Beckman 1988; Xu 1998; D'Imperio 2000; Frota 2002; Welby 2002, 2003, in press, Welby & Lœvenbruck) • Comparative study of these methods underway

17. The word segmentation problem • How do we know where words begin and end? • Speech has no convenient spaces between words • Listeners exploit a variety of cues • phonotactics [mr] not a possible syllable onset in Dutch (McQueen 1998) • regularity of word stress English words tend to start with stressed syllables (Cutler & coll.) The'lonius Monk  The 'Loneliest Monk • Durational cues to word/phrase boundaries Phrase-final lengthening in French (Banel & Bacri 1994) • Intonational cues French late rise cues word end (Bagou & Frauenfelder 2002, 2006)

18. What about the early rise? “It is the regular alternation in melodic height between content words and function words that seems to us to be an essential characteristic of French (along the same lines as the alternation between strong syllables and weak syllables in English). While content words are in general marked by a passage (at least) in the high register of the speaker, function words . . . are characterized by a low target f0 value. . . .Corresponding to the presence of function words, there is an elbow . . . , which is a cue to a break: the low value, a boundary marker, is associated with the function word.” Vaissière, 1997

19. [me.la.m.din]

20. Rise beginning at target syllable 2 Rise beginning at target syllable 1 Rise beginning at target syllable 2 Rise beginning at target syllable 1 [me.la.m.din] natural resynthesized

21. Results “2 word” responses Start of early rise Syllable 1 Syllable 2 resynth resynth nat nat

22. Time course of use of intonational cues Question: At what stage in processing are intonational cues used ? “It is reasonable to suppose that this marking…of word beginnings accelerates lexical access”(Vaissière 1997) Methodology: lexical decision cross-modal priming eyetracking 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Ensuite, accrochez les dominos bleus. Next, hang the ______________. les dominos les dominos

23. et mes lamondines et mes lamondines et mes lamondines et mélamondine et mélamondine et mélamondine Intonational cues in infant word segmentation • Context:Babies use prosodic cues to segment speech and to distinguish one language from another. Even newborns are sensitive to intonation.(Mehler et al. 1988, Jusczyk et al. 1993, Christophe1994, Nazzi et al. 1998a/b, Ramus 2002, Nazzi et al. 2005) • Questions:– Do babies use intonation in word segmentation? • To which language-specific cues are babies sensitive? • At what age does this sensibility develop? • Methodology: Production: prosodic patterns of motherese, babies’ first words (Brown/ DDL corpus) Perception: head-turning, eye gaze preference TEST PHASE HABITUATION PHASE

24. Merci !