Anchoring effects in Spanish Pilar Prieto and Francisco Torreira (ICREA-UAB & ULB) 2004 TIE Workshop Santorini, September 11-13, 2004

Invariance in scaling and alignment Increasing evidence that LH points in the tonal space behave as phonological (ie., aligned and scaled in extremely consistent ways): L values aligned with onset of accented syllable (Prieto et al. 1995, Arvaniti et al. 2001,...) H peak height predicted by constant downstep ratio (Liberman and Pierrehumbert 1994, Prieto et al. 1995,...)

Anchoring Hypothesis Recent research suggests that when prosodic effects are excluded alignment of F0 targets is governed by segmental or syllabic anchoring. Strict alignment effects are pervasive under changes of syllabic/segmental structure and speech rate (Arvaniti & Ladd 1995 Greek; Ladd et al English; Xu 1998 Chinese; Schepman et al. subm Dutch; Atterer & Ladd, to appear, German). Ls and Hs are anchored to specific points in the segmental structure, regardless of segmental or syllable structure composition.

Goals of the study Test the segmental and syllabic anchoring hypothesis for H prenuclear peaks in Spanish Given the same prosodic context, is H anchored to the segmentals or to the syllable, regardless of.. segmental composition in the syllable? syllable structure? speech rate?

Experimental Design Experiment 1 focuses on the effects of segmental and syllabic composition on prenuclear peak placement. Experiment 2 focuses on the effects of syllable structure and speech rate on prenuclear peak placement.

Experimental Design, 2 Contour typically found in read speech: initial prenuclear H does not exhibit peak displacement. Subjects: 3 young female speakers of Peninsular Spanish.

Labeling Scheme Key points manually placed: Segmental landmarks (in ms): Onset of every target segment of accented and postaccented syllables (o, c0, v0, (k0), c1, v1, c2) at the beginning of segmental landmarks End of word (ew) Phrase-initial and final points (only Exp 2) Pitch landmarks: L, H (-4% of f0 range after f0 peak)

Example of prenuclear LH* Beginning of the sentence Emilio Rodríguez terminó ayer (02b, Raquel 2rep)

Experiment 1 GOAL: test the effects of segmental and syllabic composition on prenuclear peak placement. 4 speakers of Castilian Spanish read a corpus of 96 sentences exhibiting the phonological variety needed to test our hypothesis A total of 432 tokens (48 utterances x 3 speakers x 3 repetitions)

Effects of syllable duration  Very high positive correlation between syllable duration and H delay  H is retracted in closed syllables

Effects of syllable structure Closed syllables display a significantly later H alignment than open syllables for the 3 speakers A two-way ANOVA showed significant effects for both SYLSTRUC and SPEAKER (p<0.000), plus an interaction between the two (p=0.009)

Effects of segmental composition /length All syllables are open Long = complex onset + low/mid vowel ex: Hablado Short = simple onset + high vowel ex: Paulina

Effects of coda type Separate two-way ANOVAs revealed significant effects for SPEAKER (p<0.000), CODATYPE (p<0.000) both for hdelay and htoev0. For hdelay/codatype an interaction between SPEAKER and CODATPE was found (p<0.013). No significant interaction (p=0.097) was found in the case of htoev0.

Conclusions (Exp. 1) Experiment 1 suggests a ‘loose’ alignment towards the end of v0 depending on the following factors: Syllable duration: Durations of onset and vowel have a linear effect on H placement. Syllable structure: Closed syllables display a significant later alignment than open syllables. Segmental composition: Coda type has an effect on peak alignment, as peaks align some ms later in nasal codas than in lateral codas.

Experiment 2 GOAL: test the effects of syllable structure and speech rate on prenuclear H placement. Same 3 speakers of Castilian Spanish read twice 16 target syllables in proparoxytone words, at a normal, fast and slow rates. A total of 288 utterances (16 utterances x 3 speech rates x 3 speakers x 2 repetitions).

Speech materials The database consisted of a total of 16 test proparoxytonic words, divided in 2 groups: open vs. closed syllables. OpenLa lámina blanca está en la mesa El Málaga B jugará la final La Mónica hija no vendrá La nómina suya parece mayor El nódulo central tiene averías ClosedMi lánguido niño no se encuentra bien Al Ándalus árabe y Castilla cristiana El ámbito suyo es muy interesante La mándola mágica suena muy bien El nórdico blanco le costó mucho

Effects of syllable duration High correlation (around 0,90) between syllable duration and H delay for the 3 speakers (exc 1 case) Less delay in syllables with no coda

Effects of syllable structure Peaks more retracted into the syllable in closed syllables; differences are statistically significant for the 3 speakers No strict anchoring at end of syllable

No anchoring at syllable or vowel ends Peaks signif. displaced to the right in closed syllables (t- test significances at p < 0,0001) No anchoring at end of V

Effects of speech rate As expected, speech rate (fast, normal, slow) had a significant effect on utterance length (in ms). ANOVA significant at 0,0001 for each speaker.

Effects of speech rate, 2 Peaks are retracted as speech rate decreases, for the 3 speakers. ANOVA shows statistically significant differences for 2 speakers

Conclusion (Exp. 2) Exp. 2 also shows a ‘loose’ alignment towards the end of v0 depending on the following factors: Duration of the syllable: of the syllable is positively correlated with H delay Syllable structure: Closed syllables display a significant later alignment than open syllables. Speech rate: peaks are retracted as speech rate decreases (fast > normal > slow).

General conclusion Strong version of the ‘segmental anchoring’ or ‘syllabic anchoring’ hypothesis cannot be maintained. Prenuclear peaks in Spanish ‘loosely’ anchored at ends of V0, depending on: Syllable duration Syllable structure Speech rate Coda type The 4 factors significantly contribute to linear models of peak placement, the first 2 being the most relevant (R2 = 80-90%).