Memory and context effects on representations of variation in phrasal intonation

该奖项全部或部分由2021年美国救援计划法案（公法117-2）资助。意义在口语中通过单词及其在句子中的排列来传达，也通过单词和句子说出的方式-它们的语调来传达。在英语中，语调传达话语意义，标记问题和陈述之间的区别，表达说话者的不确定性或惊讶，或突出信息词。这些意义是通过音高和其他声学特征的复杂模式在句子中的单词中传达的。要理解语调系统的工作原理，就需要详细描述说话者所产生的语调模式，以及感知上显著的要素：句子中每个单词的音高模式是否都有潜在意义？如果没有，句子中哪些语调特征和哪些区域对传达话语意义更重要（或更不重要）？另一个问题是，听者是否注意到语调特征的细微变化，作为在“问题”或“信息焦点”等宽泛类别中标记相应的区别，或者，他们是否注意到语调中的粗粒度区别作为对宽泛含义类别的提示，而感知细粒度变化作为对说话者身份或心理状态的提示。理解语调和意义之间的映射关系对于言语交际、认知、大脑和语言学习理论都具有重要意义。它已在临床领域的应用与语音，听力，和大脑，并为增强计算机语音技术，可以处理表达口语。本项目的目标是识别的短语语调的元素，在听到的语音和编码的长期记忆表征。这些表征是通过任务来挖掘的，在这些任务中，听众再现了所听到的话语的语调。实验将测试24个不同的语调“曲调”提出的英语语调的自动段韵律理论。在八个实验中，参与者的任务再现语调操纵在三个方面：使用更复杂的语调模式和变量的词汇和句法内容的模型句子;引入一个时间延迟或干预语音任务之间听到的模型句子和再现的语调模式;与信息的前一个话语和社会背景，支持解释的语调意义。动态声学测量的分析将测试再现的语调模式与相应刺激的相似性，揭示语调表征的语音粒度沿着与音高、响度、克里思和音质相关的维度，以及个体是否在他们再现的语调特征上存在差异。这些发现将解决长期存在的关于语调表征的问题，为语调及其意义的语言学理论提供信息，并以可用于其他语言研究的新实验范式推进语调研究，该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的学术价值和更广泛的影响审查标准。

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).Meaning is communicated in spoken language through words and their arrangement in sentences, and also through the way the words and sentences are said — their intonation. In English, intonation conveys discourse meaning, marking the distinction between a question and a statement, expressing the speaker's uncertainty or surprise, or highlighting informative words. These meanings are conveyed through complex patterns in pitch and other acoustic features, across the words in the sentence. Understanding how an intonation system works requires a detailed description of the intonation patterns that speakers produce, and an account of the elements that are perceptually salient: Is the pitch pattern of every word in a sentence potentially meaningful, and if not, which intonational features and which regions of the sentence are more (or less) critical for conveying discourse meaning? A further question is whether listeners pay attention to subtle variation in intonational features as marking corresponding distinctions in broad categories like 'question' or 'information focus', or alternatively, whether they attend to coarse-grained distinctions in intonation as cues to the broad meaning categories, while perceiving fine-grained variation as cues to speaker identity or psychological state. Understanding the mapping between intonation and meaning is important for theories of speech communication, cognition, the brain, and language learning. It has applications in clinical domains related to speech, hearing, and the brain, and for enhanced computer speech technologies that can process expressive spoken language.The goal of this project is to identify the elements of phrasal intonation that are perceived in heard speech and encoded in long-term memory representations. These representations are tapped through tasks where listeners reproduce the intonation of a heard utterance. Experiments will test 24 distinct intonational "tunes" proposed for English in the Autosegmental-Metrical theory of English intonation. In eight experiments, the participant's task of reproducing intonation is manipulated in three ways: using model sentences with more complex intonational patterns and variable lexical and syntactic content; introducing a time delay or an intervening speech task between hearing the model sentence and reproducing the intonation pattern; with information about the immediately preceding discourse and social context that support the interpretation of intonational meaning. Analyses of dynamic acoustic measures will test the similarity of reproduced intonation patterns to corresponding stimuli, revealing the phonetic granularity of intonational representations along dimensions related to pitch, loudness, tempo, and voice quality, and whether individuals vary in the intonational features they reproduce. The findings will resolve long-standing questions about intonational representation, informing linguistic theories of intonation and its meaning, and advancing intonation research with a novel experimental paradigm that can be used in studies of other languages, with no requirements on written language or the explicit definition of intonational meaning.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.