2007/06/13

Erickson, D., Honda, K., Hirai, H., & Beckman, M. (1995). The production of low tones in English intonation. Journal of Phonetics, 23, 179–188.

Presentation: Sarah
Summary: Chris

This paper investigates the relationship between fundamental frequency (F0) and sternohyoid (SH) activities in low tones which occur in four types of pitch accents and low tones which occur in a phrase boundary in English intonation contours produced at three levels of overall vocal effort. The authors would like to find out whether there are pragmatic differences among low tones in English intonation contours comparable to the differences among high tones. Also, another research question is that do the low tones vary across differences in overall pitch ranges. If yes, how do they vary? Also, does the variation in pitch range reflect different degrees of laryngeal control? Three American English speakers uttered sentences at three levels of vocal effort—soft, normal and loud. Results showed that paradigmatic differences among L tones in English intonation contours are comparable to those in H tones. The SH activity reflects the paradigmatic differences in the five tone types and is the inverse function of various tone types. However, the variation in F0 level across overall pitch range is not reflected in the SH activity, suggesting that there is a shift of baseline for the function from one vocal effort level to the next.