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

口语由多个信息流组成--包括分段信息流(即组成单词、后缀、前缀等的辅音和元音)。以及通常被称为“韵律”的超段音段流(例如，定义重音和节奏的音高、幅度、时序等)。所有说话者(有意识或无意识地)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，大多数关于意义的正式和计算语言学研究主要涉及由分段流(词、后缀和前缀)编码的意义。这个项目通过探索韵律和意义如何相关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？又有什么意思呢？为了探索这些问题，研究小组使用了当代的经验方法、分析工具和形式理论，并特别关注韵律的语调方面。该项目包括三组实验任务：语音产生和语音感知。每一组任务都对应于不同的语义/语用意义领域：共同点管理、信息结构信号传递和范围歧义解决。不同的语义/语用语境对应于不同的实验条件，这些语境以可视的、连环画般的刺激呈现给参与者。这些实验测量语音的韵律特征(例如，用最近开发的称为Polal的注释系统编码的音调运动)和/或对语音的反应(例如，可接受性评级)。然后对这些数据进行量化分析，并建立正式的语言模型，以揭示不同的意义条件和不同的韵律模式是如何联系在一起的。这项工作对于改善以自然语言为中介的人机交互以及加深对各种语言病理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智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Spoken language consists of multiple streams of information – including a segmental stream (i.e., the consonants and vowels that make up words, suffixes, prefixes, etc.) and a suprasegmental stream (e.g., the pitch, amplitude, timing, etc. 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 be 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.