Doctoral Dissertation Research: The interaction between tone, prosody and accent

世界上的语言传统上被分为三类（重音、音高或音调），这是基于音高是如何被用来区分单词的。然而，这种语言的划分主要是基于印象判断，而不是基于语言特性的详细定量测量。最近的研究表明，这种类型学在描述音高在语言中的确切作用以及语言之间多样性的相关来源方面是非常不足的。例如，虽然一种语言可能利用音高作为区分单词的主要声学线索，但它也可能使用重音，这表明这两种现象并不相互排斥。流行的类型学，尽管可以说是有缺陷的，但已经形成了许多关于语言本质和语言复杂性的重要主张的基础，这些主张反过来又影响了外语教学中语言教学法的发展，以及语音识别软件等工具开发中韵律系统的建模方式。考虑到这些资源在当今全球社会中的重要性，对于语言学家来说，形成一个清晰的画面，了解说话者在生产和感知中使用语音的声学特性的方式是很重要的。目前的项目旨在进一步研究音高、重音和韵律结构，以更好地理解这些结构元素是如何相互作用的，最终目标是开发更准确的语言类型学，并为语言教学和自然语言处理提供一套更充分的工具。该项目的研究将在喀麦隆西南部进行，重点是巴米莱克语，这是贝努埃-刚果语系（尼日尔-刚果语系）的姆巴姆-恩卡姆分支的一个分支。这些语言有一些世界上最复杂的音调系统，它们的结构还有很多有待了解的地方。最近的研究表明，单词和短语级别的重音属性让人想起那些在典型重音语言中发现的特征，这是这些语言中以前无法解释的音调现象的原因，而且重音在声音组织中可能发挥的作用比以前认为的要重要得多。本研究将详细探讨音高、元音质量、振幅、音节和元音持续时间等声学测量在语言产生中的相互作用方式，以及听者在感知语音时对这些线索的加权方式。数据将以受控生产和感知实验的形式收集，以及以母语人士之间自然对话的形式收集。研究结果将有助于我们理解在基于词汇的音调对比的语言中，音高和其他声音线索在不同语法结构层次上的使用方式。由于许多被美国政府视为学习“关键”的语言也符合这一描述（普通话、旁遮普语、豪萨语等），这项工作将对各种各样的国家语言培训计划产生重要影响。

The world's languages have traditionally been divided into one of three categories (stress-accent, pitch-accent, or tone) based on how pitch is utilized to distinguish words from one another. However, this division of languages is based largely on the impressionistic judgments rather than on detailed quantitative measurements of linguistic properties. Recent work has demonstrated that this typology is deeply inadequate for characterizing both the precise role(s) of pitch in language, and the relevant sources of diversity among languages. For example, although a language may utilize pitch as the primary acoustic cue to differentiate between words, it may also use stress, suggesting that these two phenomena are not mutually exclusive. The prevailing typology, though arguably flawed, has formed the basis for many important claims about the nature of language and linguistic complexity, which in turn have shaped how linguistic pedagogies are developed for use in foreign language teaching, and the way that prosodic systems are modeled for developing tools such as speech recognition software. Given the importance of such resources in today's global society, it is important for linguists to form a clear picture of the ways in which the acoustic properties of speech are used by speakers both in production and in perception. The current project aims to take a closer look at pitch, accent and prosodic structure in an effort to better understand how these structural elements interact, with the end goal of developing a more accurate linguistic typology, and a more adequate set of tools for language teaching and natural language processing.Research for this project will take place in Southwestern Cameroon, focusing on the Bamileke languages, a subgroup of the Mbam-Nkam branch of the Benue-Congo group (Niger-Congo family). These languages have some of the most complex tone systems in the world, and much remains to be understood about their structure. Recent work suggests that word- and phrase-level accentual properties reminiscent of those found in prototypical stress languages are responsible for previously unexplained tonal phenomena in these languages, and that accent may play a much more important role in the organization of sounds than was formerly thought. This research will endeavor to explore in detail the way that acoustic measures such as pitch, vowel quality, amplitude, syllable and vowel duration interact in language production, and the way that these cues are weighted by listeners when perceiving speech. Data will be collected in the form of controlled production and perception experiments, as well as in the form of natural conversation between native speakers of the language. Research findings will contribute to our understanding of the ways in which pitch can be used alongside other acoustic cues at different levels of grammatical structure in a language with lexically-based tonal contrasts. Since many of the languages deemed 'critical' for learning by the US government also fit this description (Mandarin Chinese, Punjabi, Hausa, etc.), this work will have important implications for a wide variety of national language training initiatives.