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Investigating Intonational PlateauxRachael-Anne Knight, University of Cambridgerak34@cam.ac.uk

What are Intonational Plateaux? Targets appear as flat

stretches in the fundamental frequency (F0) contour…

…rather than as single turning points

The start (PON) and end (POF) are 4% down from the absolute peak (in Hz) following e.g. House et al 1999

PLATEAU

POFPON

ACCENTED SYLLABLE

FOOT

1 2 3

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Syllable Structure Effects

The location of the plateau varies with the onset type of the accented syllable…

. . .and also with the coda type

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Foot Structure Effects

The plateau is earlier in the foot when there are more syllables in the foot

The plateau is earlier in the syllable in monosyllabic feet

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Word Boundary Effects

The end of the plateau (POF) is earlier (in the foot) when there is an up-coming word boundary…

…but only significantly so for women, men show no significant effect of word boundary!

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Pitch Range Effects

The plateau is shorter in expanded ranges

The beginning of the plateau (PON) occurs later in the foot but the end of the plateau (POF) is unaffected

POF is relatively stable for each subject but varies substantially between subjects (accents?!)

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Conclusions

Aspects of the plateau’s alignment co-vary with: Syllable structure (onset and coda type) Foot structure (number of syllables) Linguistic structure (word boundaries) Paralinguistic variables (pitch range)

There are possible gender differences and accent differences

Reference: House, J., Dancovicova, J. and Huckvale, M. (1999) “Intonational modelling inProSynth”. Proc. XIV ICPhs Vol 3 2343-2346 University of California, Berkely, CA