Collaborative Research: Exploring Variation in English Intonational Acoustic Phonetics from Grammatical Perspectives

合作研究：从语法角度探索英语语调声学语音的变异

• 批准号: 2042694
• 负责人: Byron Ahn
• 金额: $ 20.66万
• 依托单位: Princeton University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-08-15 至 2025-01-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2042694&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Exploring; Variation; English

Spoken language consists of multiple streams of information – including a segmental stream (for example, the consonants and vowels that make up words, suffixes, and prefixes) and a suprasegmental stream (such as the pitch, amplitude, and timing that define stress and cadence) which is often called "prosody". All speakers (consciously or not) know prosody can be used to communicate meaning – a single sequence of words can be pronounced many ways, often with importantly distinct meanings. Despite this, most formal and computational linguistic investigations into meaning have primarily dealt with meanings encoded by the segmental stream (in words, suffixes, and prefixes). This project addresses this issue by exploring questions of how prosody and meaning relate. For example, what sorts of prosodic changes map onto changes in meaning? And what sorts of meanings? To explore these questions, the research team makes use of contemporary empirical methodologies, analytic tools, and formal theories, and particular attention is paid to intonational aspects of prosody.The project encompasses three sets of experimental tasks of speech production and speech perception. Each of these sets of tasks corresponds to a different domain of semantic/pragmatic meanings: Common Ground management, Information Structure signalling, and scope ambiguity resolution. Different semantic/pragmatic contexts correspond to different experimental conditions, and these contexts are presented to participants as visual, comic strip-like, stimuli. These experiments measure prosodic characteristics of speech (e.g., pitch movements, coded with a recently developed annotation system called PoLaR) and/or reactions to speech (e.g., acceptability ratings). These data are then subjected to quantitative analysis as well as to formal linguistic models to uncover how different meaning-based conditions and different prosodic patterns are related. This work has important implications for improving human-computer interactions that are mediated by natural language, as well as for deepening understanding of various speech pathologies.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.

口语由多个信息流组成-包括分段流（例如，组成单词的辅音和元音，后缀和前缀）和超分段流（例如音高，幅度和定义重音和节奏的时间），通常被称为“韵律”。所有的说话者（有意识或无意识）都知道韵律可以用来传达意思--一个单词序列可以有多种发音方式，通常具有重要的不同含义。尽管如此，大多数形式语言学和计算语言学对意义的研究主要是处理由音段流（单词、后缀和前缀）编码的意义。这个项目通过探讨韵律和意义如何联系的问题来解决这个问题。例如，什么样的韵律变化映射到意义的变化？什么样的意义？为了探索这些问题，研究小组利用当代的实证方法，分析工具，和正式的理论，并特别关注语调方面的韵律。该项目包括三组实验任务的语音产生和语音感知。每一组任务都对应于不同的语义/语用意义域：共同点管理、信息结构信令和范围歧义解决。不同的语义/语用语境对应于不同的实验条件，这些语境被呈现给参与者作为视觉的，漫画般的，刺激。这些实验测量语音的韵律特征（例如，用最近开发的称为PoLaR的注释系统编码的音高移动）和/或对语音的反应（例如，可接受性评级）。这些数据，然后进行定量分析，以及正式的语言模型，以揭示不同的意义为基础的条件和不同的韵律模式是如何相关的。这项工作对改善以自然语言为媒介的人机交互以及加深对各种语言疾病的理解具有重要意义。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。