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Word prominence ratings in Swedish television news readings : Effects of pitch accents and head movements

Ambrazaitis, Gilbert LU ; Frid, Johan LU orcid and House, David LU (2020) 10th International Conference on Speech Prosody 2020 In Proceedings of the International Conference on Speech Prosody p.314-318
Abstract

Prosodic prominence is a multimodal phenomenon where pitch accents are frequently aligned with visible movements by the hands, head, or eyebrows. However, little is known about how such movements function as visible prominence cues in multimodal speech perception with most previous studies being restricted to experimental settings. In this study, we are piloting the acquisition of multimodal prominence ratings for a corpus of natural speech (Swedish television news readings). Sixteen short video clips (218 words) of news readings were extracted from a larger corpus and rated by 44 native Swedish adult volunteers using a web-based set-up. The task was to rate each word in a clip as either non-prominent, moderately prominent or strongly... (More)

Prosodic prominence is a multimodal phenomenon where pitch accents are frequently aligned with visible movements by the hands, head, or eyebrows. However, little is known about how such movements function as visible prominence cues in multimodal speech perception with most previous studies being restricted to experimental settings. In this study, we are piloting the acquisition of multimodal prominence ratings for a corpus of natural speech (Swedish television news readings). Sixteen short video clips (218 words) of news readings were extracted from a larger corpus and rated by 44 native Swedish adult volunteers using a web-based set-up. The task was to rate each word in a clip as either non-prominent, moderately prominent or strongly prominent based on audiovisual cues. The corpus was previously annotated for pitch accents and head movements. We found that words realized with a pitch accent and head movement tended to receive higher prominence ratings than words with a pitch accent only. However, we also examined ratings for a number of carefully selected individual words, and these case studies suggest that ratings are affected by complex relations between the presence of a head movement and its type of alignment, the word's F0 profile, and semantic and pragmatic factors.

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Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
; and
organization
publishing date
type
Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding
publication status
published
subject
keywords
Audiovisual prosody, Multimodal prominence, Multimodal speech perception
host publication
Proceedings 10th International Conference on Speech Prosody 2020
series title
Proceedings of the International Conference on Speech Prosody
pages
5 pages
publisher
ISCA
conference name
10th International Conference on Speech Prosody 2020
conference location
Tokyo, Japan
conference dates
2020-05-25 - 2020-05-28
external identifiers
  • scopus:85093884721
ISSN
2333-2042
DOI
10.21437/SpeechProsody.2020-64
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
200695ee-723e-4be0-83ff-55b259005b79
date added to LUP
2020-11-12 09:40:12
date last changed
2022-04-19 01:58:20
@inproceedings{200695ee-723e-4be0-83ff-55b259005b79,
  abstract     = {{<p>Prosodic prominence is a multimodal phenomenon where pitch accents are frequently aligned with visible movements by the hands, head, or eyebrows. However, little is known about how such movements function as visible prominence cues in multimodal speech perception with most previous studies being restricted to experimental settings. In this study, we are piloting the acquisition of multimodal prominence ratings for a corpus of natural speech (Swedish television news readings). Sixteen short video clips (218 words) of news readings were extracted from a larger corpus and rated by 44 native Swedish adult volunteers using a web-based set-up. The task was to rate each word in a clip as either non-prominent, moderately prominent or strongly prominent based on audiovisual cues. The corpus was previously annotated for pitch accents and head movements. We found that words realized with a pitch accent and head movement tended to receive higher prominence ratings than words with a pitch accent only. However, we also examined ratings for a number of carefully selected individual words, and these case studies suggest that ratings are affected by complex relations between the presence of a head movement and its type of alignment, the word's F0 profile, and semantic and pragmatic factors.</p>}},
  author       = {{Ambrazaitis, Gilbert and Frid, Johan and House, David}},
  booktitle    = {{Proceedings 10th International Conference on Speech Prosody 2020}},
  issn         = {{2333-2042}},
  keywords     = {{Audiovisual prosody; Multimodal prominence; Multimodal speech perception}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  pages        = {{314--318}},
  publisher    = {{ISCA}},
  series       = {{Proceedings of the International Conference on Speech Prosody}},
  title        = {{Word prominence ratings in Swedish television news readings : Effects of pitch accents and head movements}},
  url          = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.21437/SpeechProsody.2020-64}},
  doi          = {{10.21437/SpeechProsody.2020-64}},
  year         = {{2020}},
}