This paper describes some of the more salient intonational phenomena of Spanish, and reviews several of the most pressing questions that remain to be addressed before a deÞnitive model of the system can be incorporated into a consensus transcription system for the language. The phenomena reviewed include the metrical underpinnings of the tune, and some of the local tone shapes that are anchored at stressed syllables or at phrase edges in several common intonation contours. The description of known facts is couched in the Autosegmental-Metrical model of intonational phonology, as is the review of outstanding questions. The description is used to motivate the preliminary transcription conventions proposed by the Spanish ToBI development group.

This study investigated productions of accentual prominence patterns in English by native English speakers (ENG) and by two groups of Mandarin Chinese speakers differing in amounts of English language experience, M1 (less-experienced) and M2 (more-experienced). Because the falling intonation patterns of declarative English sentences are acoustically similar to high-falling tone 4 in Mandarin, and low-rising intonation patterns of interrogatives are similar to low tone 3, transfer of these tonal constructs by Mandarin speakers into productions of English intonation patterns is expected. The stress-pair, memorizes/memorial was produced with three levels of accentual prominence, from most prominent to completely unaccented, in declarative and interrogative contexts. Comparisons of f0, duration, and intensity levels between the unstressed and stressed first and second target syllables were made. Preliminary results suggest that M1 use acoustic characteristics of prominence from their native language while M2 perform more like ENG. M2 and ENG subjects produced progressively greater changes in f0, duration, and intensity within three levels of accent. In M1 productions, similar rises in f0, durations and intensities were evident in the stressed syllable of target words regardless of accent level and type indicating that transfer of Mandarin prosodic constructs occurs in the early stages of language acquisition.

Tests of intertranscriber agreement in prosodically-labeled corpora have been used as an objective performance measure of reliability. Reasonably high agreements among labelers have been found, but systematic disagreements exist, indicating that some intonational patterns are more difficult for transcribers to label while others are easier. This may be due to differences in the way transcribers distinguish between tonal labels for pitch events. We developed a method to map the subjective similarity space for the categories in an intonational transcription system. From this map, we derived a conceptual tone similarity similarity index indicating the distance between tone categories. This subjective similarity index is used to predict the intertranscriber reliability. It is found that tones which are conceptually similar result in higher transcriptional disagreements while tones which are conceptually dissimilar result in lower disagreement.

Summer Linguistics Institute for Youth Scholars (SLIYS), held on The Ohio State University campus, offers intensive courses in linguistics to high school students from Ohio and around the world. Each year, nearly 100 students participate in 1‐ or 2‐week‐long camps where they engage in the scientific study of language and experience a realistic introduction to academics and university life. The programme's objectives are to provide students with the linguistic tools needed to understand their native language, become better learners of a foreign language and investigate unknown languages. Beyond academics, the high school camp immerses students into university life in a controlled environment providing a non‐threatening experience in academia to students unfamiliar with college. This article describes the evolution of SLIYS and its current incarnation, specifically how and why it works. We discuss the goals of the programme, the structure of SLIYS and how it is sustained, how the programme is assessed, and finally we share information about the general cost of the programme and our recruiting efforts that ensure that SLIYS continues in future years.

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