Three dimensions of sentence prosody

句子韵律的三个维度

• 批准号: RGPIN-2018-06153
• 负责人: Wagner, Michael
• 金额: $ 2.91万
• 依托单位: McGill University
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2020-01-01 至 2021-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=713798
• 关键词: Three; dimensions; sentence; prosody

Speech synthesis has come a long way. Today's computers can produce words and sentences highly accurately, but if a computer reads out a novel text, the result is still often hard to listen to. A major reason is our lack of understanding of sentence prosody. Sentence prosody can be characterized as all those acoustic properties of an utterance that are not a function of the words it contains, but rather are due to other factors, and includes three separate dimensions: Intonation (e.g., falling intonation on assertions vs. rising intonation on questions), Phrasing (the way the words in a sentence group together), and Prominence (for example highly predictable or discourse given words are often reduced, while contrastive information is boosted). These three dimensions of sentence prosody (intonation, phrasing, prominence) are partly determined by the phonological representations of a particular language (e.g., declarative intonation in French sounds different than in English) and partly a direct reflex of on-line processing during speaking (e.g., complex constituents are often preceded by phrasing junctures). Once we understand the representational questions and can disentangle the three dimensions, sentence prosody can be used as a window into cognitive mechanisms underlying speech production. This proposal brings together several strands of research that my lab has contributed to in the past. The first step to a better understanding of sentence prosody is to disentangle the three mentioned dimensions in the signal. The syntactic and semantic functions (type of speech act, grouping, contrast) are orthogonal to each other, but whether their prosodic correlates (tune, phrasing, prominence) are remains controversial. Most current models of sentence prosody assume interactions or even conflate the dimensions. However, the reality of the assumed interactions between the dimensions has not been systematically established. An initial study, conducted for this proposal in my lab (Wagner & McAuliffe 2017, Interspeech), systematically crossed the three functional dimensions (speech act, syntax, contrast) in a factorial speech production experiment. The results show that we can in fact recover the three `dimensions' of prosody quite reliably from speakers' utterances, once we factor out the contribution of the other dimensions, as well as speaker differences. While we find limited interactions, they are not actually the ones that current models predict. This project consists of a series of production and perception experiments designed to establish the true interactions, and develops a more appropriate representational model. We make use of novel tools (e.g, The Montreal Forced Aligner, developed in my lab, Mcauliffe et al. 2017, Interspeech) and statistical modelling, to develop models that can disentangle the dimensions, just as humans do when processing speech.

语音合成已经取得了长足的进步。今天的计算机可以非常准确地生成单词和句子，但如果计算机读出一篇小说文本，结果仍然很难听。一个主要原因是我们缺乏对句子韵律的理解。句子韵律可以被描述为一个话语的所有声学特性，而不是它所包含的单词的功能，而是由于其他因素，包括三个独立的维度：语调（例如，断言时的降调与疑问句时的升调），短语（句子中单词组合在一起的方式）和突出（例如，高度可预测或话语给定的单词经常被减少，而对比信息被增强）。句子韵律的这三个维度（语调、措辞、突出）部分是由特定语言的语音表征决定的（例如，法语的陈述性语调听起来与英语不同），部分是说话时在线加工的直接反映（例如，复杂成分之前经常有措辞转折）。一旦我们理解了表征性问题并解开了这三个维度，句子韵律就可以作为研究语音产生背后的认知机制的窗口。这个提议汇集了我的实验室过去所做的几项研究。