Doctoral Dissertation Research: Intonational Cues in Emotional Contexts

博士论文研究：情感语境中的语调线索

• 批准号: 2215338
• 负责人: Jennifer Cole
• 金额: $ 1.01万
• 依托单位: Northwestern University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-07-01 至 2024-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2215338&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Intonational; Cues

The meaning conveyed through language depends not only on what is said--sounds, words, phrases--but also on how it is said--pitch, loudness, tempo, and other dimensions of intonation. In American English, distinct intonation patterns are used to convey meaning related to the discourse context of an utterance, distinguishing questions from assertions, the continuation of a speaker's turn in a dialogue, or marking emphasis on words that contribute new information. Decoding linguistic meaning from phonetic cues related to intonation is complicated by the fact that the same phonetic parameters are also integral to the speaker’s expression of emotion. How do these two factors—discourse meaning and speaker emotion—interact in determining the intonational form of an utterance, and how do listeners disentangle intonational cues to linguistic meaning from cues to the speaker's emotional state? To answer this question, this project investigates variation in the phonetic encoding of discourse meaning based on speaker emotion, and how listeners use information about a speaker’s emotional state to guide their interpretation of discourse meaning. Phase I of this project examines evidence from speech production experiments that elicit specific intonation patterns in sentences produced under different conditions of enacted emotion. Phase II tests how listeners' perception of speaker emotion affects how they process linguistic intonational categories and the interpretation of discourse meaning. The findings from this study will shed light on the interaction between linguistic context and speaker emotion in the production and perception of intonation. This work adopts the Autosegmental-Metrical model of American English intonation, in which the phonetic implementation of intonation derives from phonological structures that group words into prosodic phrases, and tone features that mark prosodic phrase edges (boundary tones) and phrasal prominence (pitch accents). The investigation focuses on how enacted emotion affects the production of eight phrase-final intonation “tunes” (e.g., falling pitch or rising pitch) that have distinct pragmatic meaning. Tunes are elicited using an imitation paradigm. Participants hear a tune on a model sentence, and then produce the same tune on a new sentence presented in a discourse context congruent with the tune meaning, under four conditions of enacted emotion. The effect of emotion on acoustic correlates of intonation is modeled using Bayesian mixed-effects regression. A subset of recorded utterances from the production experiment are used as stimuli in a series of perception and comprehension experiments. Perceptual discrimination among tunes is tested as a function of enacted emotion using AXB discrimination, and a free classification task where listeners group utterances according to the speaker's inferred communicative goal (e.g., to express surprise, make an assertion). Comprehension of tune meaning is tested through a structured set of questions probing listeners’ pragmatic judgments for each tune as a function of the enacted emotion. This project contributes to linguistic theories of intonational form and meaning, with new insights into speaker emotion as a source of variation in intonation production and perception, and contributes a new corpus of speech recordings, the English IntEX Corpus, for future research on intonation and emotion.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.

通过语言传达的含义不仅取决于所说的内容，单词，短语 - 而且还取决于它的说法如何 - 诉，响亮，速度，节奏和其他语调。在美国英语中，使用独特的语调模式来传达与话语的话语背景相关的意义，将问题与主张区分开，在对话中延续说话者的延续或对贡献新信息的单词进行标记。与语调相关的语音提示中解码语言意义的复杂事实是，相同的语音参数也是说话者情感表达不可或缺的一部分。这两个因素如何 - 宣传意义和说话者的情感 - 确定话语的语言形式，以及听众如何将语言意义从语言意义中解脱为从提示到说话者的情感状态的语言意义？为了回答这个问题，该项目研究了基于说话者情感的语音编码含义的语音编码的差异，以及听众如何使用有关说话者情绪状态的信息来指导他们对话语含义的解释。该项目考试的第一阶段检查来自语音生产实验的证据，这些证据在不同的情绪条件下引起的句子中引起了特定的语调模式。第二阶段测试听众对说话者情绪的看法如何影响他们如何处理语言语言类别和对话语意义的解释。这项研究的发现将阐明语言环境与语调中的说话者情绪之间的相互作用。这项工作采用了美国英语语调的自动段学模型，其中语调的语音实现源自将单词分组为韵律短语的光学结构，并且音调具有标记韵律短语边缘（边界色调）和短语突出性（音调口音）的音调。调查的重点是颁布的情绪如何影响具有独特务实含义的八个短语 - 最终语调“曲调”（例如，音高或上升音高）。使用模仿范式引起音乐。参与者听到模型句子的曲调，然后在与曲调含义一致的新句子中产生相同的曲调，这是在四个颁布的情感条件下。情绪对语调声音相关的影响是使用贝叶斯混合效应回归建模的。在一系列的感知和理解实验中，将来自生产实验的记录的话语子集用作刺激。曲调之间的感知歧视是使用AXB歧视的颁布情绪的函数，以及一项自由分类任务，在该任务中，根据说话者的推论沟通目标（例如，表达惊喜，提出断言），听众群体的话语群体群体的话语。通过一组结构化的问题来测试对曲调含义的理解，从而探讨听众的务实法官，这是颁布情感的函数。该项目为语言形式和意义的语言理论做出了贡献，并以对说话者情感的新见解，作为语调生产和感知变化的来源，并贡献了新的语音记录语料库，英国的Intex语料库，以实现对语调和情感的未来研究，以反映NSF的法定任务和宽广的依据，这是NSF的范围的范围。 标准。