Kutik, E. J., Cooper, W. E., & Boyce, S. (1983). Declination of fundamental frequency in speakers’ production of parenthetical and main clauses. Journal of Acoustical Society of America, 73(5), 1731–1738.
Presentation: Shelly
Summary: Sally
F0 declination has long been believed to be related to our physiological constraints. In this study, the authors proposed that there should also be a share from mental programming. Proposed by Cooper and Sorensen (1981), the Topline Rule was the first to model F0 declination from peak values in English declarative sentences. In the present study, the authors went a step further to ascertain the topline representation between parenthetical and main clauses. Seven native speakers of American English were recorded reading seven sentences with an incrementally lengthened parenthetical clause inserted between the subject noun and the verb phrase (the shortest: The clock in the church, it occurred to Clark, chimed just as he began to talk; the longest: The clock in the church, it never in a million years would have occurred to Clark, chimed just as he began to talk). F0 peaks of stressed segments (in bold), duration of the main clauses, the parenthetical phrases, and the clause-final syllables of each, as well as pauses immediately preceding and following the parenthetical clauses were measured. Results showed that the parenthetical clauses consistently exhibited an independent line of declination lying below that of the main clause, as –PAR (minus-parenthetical) Topline better predicted the F0 contour of the main clause. The floor effect (sentence-final F0 peaks do not fall below a certain level, Cooper & Sorensen (1981)) was supported as the final F0 peaks in the parenthetical clauses were comparable to those in the main clauses. In addition, duration of the main clauses was held constant, with the overall sentence length increased by the addition of parenthetical length. Finally, no systematic relationship was found between pause duration and parenthetical length. These findings suggest an independent status of the parenthetical clause, which also serve as evidence of the mental involvement in declination planning: speakers were able to return to the point where they interrupted themselves by inserting a parenthetical clause into the matrix.
Presentation: Shelly
Summary: Sally
F0 declination has long been believed to be related to our physiological constraints. In this study, the authors proposed that there should also be a share from mental programming. Proposed by Cooper and Sorensen (1981), the Topline Rule was the first to model F0 declination from peak values in English declarative sentences. In the present study, the authors went a step further to ascertain the topline representation between parenthetical and main clauses. Seven native speakers of American English were recorded reading seven sentences with an incrementally lengthened parenthetical clause inserted between the subject noun and the verb phrase (the shortest: The clock in the church, it occurred to Clark, chimed just as he began to talk; the longest: The clock in the church, it never in a million years would have occurred to Clark, chimed just as he began to talk). F0 peaks of stressed segments (in bold), duration of the main clauses, the parenthetical phrases, and the clause-final syllables of each, as well as pauses immediately preceding and following the parenthetical clauses were measured. Results showed that the parenthetical clauses consistently exhibited an independent line of declination lying below that of the main clause, as –PAR (minus-parenthetical) Topline better predicted the F0 contour of the main clause. The floor effect (sentence-final F0 peaks do not fall below a certain level, Cooper & Sorensen (1981)) was supported as the final F0 peaks in the parenthetical clauses were comparable to those in the main clauses. In addition, duration of the main clauses was held constant, with the overall sentence length increased by the addition of parenthetical length. Finally, no systematic relationship was found between pause duration and parenthetical length. These findings suggest an independent status of the parenthetical clause, which also serve as evidence of the mental involvement in declination planning: speakers were able to return to the point where they interrupted themselves by inserting a parenthetical clause into the matrix.
