Cross-Linguistic Distinctions Between Professional and Non-Professional Speaking Styles

Barbosa, Plínio Almeida; Madureira, Sandra; Mareüil, Philippe Boula de

doi:10.21437/interspeech.2017-7

Cited by 4 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…(4) While the current study has analyzed data from one of the central domains of standard English usage in Trinidad, prosodic research based on data from other domains, such as media, business, or politics, possibly also including other speaking styles, would be worthwhile to investigate potential domain-specific differences (e.g., Deuber & Leung, 2013 : 311). (5) Considering the scarcity of prosodic research on TrinE (as opposed to TEC) in general, research focusing on the intonational phonology of TrinE is also needed, and phonetically driven research should be extended to account for other potential measures of the global distribution of F0 (e.g., Barbosa, Madueira, & Mareüil, 2017 ). Once phonological research on the intonation of TrinE is available, an investigation of pitch range linked to specific tones (e.g., Mennen et al, 2012 ) would also be desirable.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Trini Sing-Song: Sociophonetic variation in Trinidadian English prosody and differences to other varieties

Meer

Fuchs

2021

Lang Speech

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The current study provides a phonetic perspective on the questions of whether a high degree of variability in pitch may be considered a characteristic, endonormative feature of Trinidadian English (TrinE) at the level of speech production and contribute to what is popularly described as ‘sing-song’ prosody. Based on read and spontaneous data from 111 speakers, we analyze pitch level, range, and dynamism in TrinE in comparison to Southern Standard British (BrE) and Educated Indian English (IndE) and investigate sociophonetic variation in TrinE prosody with a view to these global F0 parameters. Our findings suggest that a large pitch range could potentially be considered an endonormative feature of TrinE that distinguishes it from other varieties (BrE and IndE), at least in spontaneous speech. More importantly, however, it is shown that a high degree of pitch variation in terms of range and dynamism is not as much characteristic of TrinE as a whole as it is of female Trinidadian speakers. An important finding of this study is that pitch variation patterns are not homogenous in TrinE, but systematically sociolinguistically conditioned across gender, age, and ethnic groups, and rural and urban speakers. The findings thus reveal that there is a considerable degree of systematic local differentiation in TrinE prosody. On a more general level, the findings may be taken to indicate that endonormative tendencies and sociolinguistic differentiation in TrinE prosody are interlinked.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Trini Sing-Song: Sociophonetic variation in Trinidadian English prosody and differences to other varieties

Meer

Fuchs

2021

Lang Speech

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Subsequently, a dedicated Praat script (available at https://osf.io/qkea5/) determined F0 at 20 ms time steps in Hertz (Hz); this is a modified version of the method used in Meer and Fuchs (2021), supplemented by additional measures adapted from Barbosa et al (2017) and Cavalcanti et al (forthcoming). Frequency in Hz was additionally converted to semitones (st) with the formula 12 * log2(freq), that is, 12 times the binary logarithm of F0 in Hz, relative to 1 Hz.…”

Section: Acoustic Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

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Prosodic variation of English in Dominica, Grenada, and Trinidad

et al. 2022

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Varieties of English in the Caribbean have been claimed to have characteristic pitch patterns. However, there is little empirical research on prosodic aspects of English in the region. This paper provides a comparative phonetic analysis of several pitch parameters (pitch level, range, dynamism, rate of change, variability in rate of change, and tone rate) in English language data from Dominica, Grenada, and Trinidad that comprises read and spontaneous speech from 243 speakers. The results show that a wide pitch range and a high degree of variability in pitch, as mentioned in previous works, are not necessarily characteristic of English in the Caribbean overall, but that there are considerable cross‐territorial prosodic differences, with English in Trinidad showing more variability than in Dominica and Grenada, particularly among female speakers. Socioprosodic variation, largely specific to Trinidad, was also identified.

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“…But, above all, they are defined prosodically. Reading news in the media is such a setting (COTTER, 1993;BARBOSA et al, 2017), as well as praying or preaching in church (NIEBUHR; SCHJOEDT, 2019;FELEVE;FAJOBI, 2019), telling a story (WICHMANN, 2021;BARBOSA et al, 2017), talking to babies/children, i.e., motherese (BIER-SACK et al, 2017) -or giving a speech (ATKINSON, 2004;SOORJOO, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Computer-assisted prosody training: Improving public speakers' vocal charisma with the Web-Pitcher

Niebuhr¹

2021

RAbralin

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Computer-assisted prosody training (CAPT) has so far mainly been used to teach foreign languages, although prosody is still hardly taken into account in language leraning. Conversely, prosody receives a lot of attention in studies and activities related to public-speaker training. But, despite that, CAPT tools are practically unknown in this type of training. The present paper addresses this gap and introduces the “Web Pitcher”, a new browser-based version of the feedback and evaluation software “Pitcher” that was developed in 2018 for the prosody-oriented training of charisma – a key characteristic of successful public speakers, which is defined as signaling competence, self-confidence and passion. In an online experiment with 60 test users it is investigated here whether and to what extent the Web Pitcher positively influences the prosodic charisma triggers of its users, and which feedback modes in which order lead to the greatest learning success. An acoustic analysis of before- vs. after-training speeches given by the 60 test users shows that the Web Pitcher improves six key prosodic charisma triggers of its learners by an average of 53 % after one hour of training – and thus performs at eye level with its offline precursor, the Pitcher. With the correct combination of its two feedback modes, the Web Pitcher even outperforms its offline precursor in terms of user improvement. The results are discussed with a view to further R&D steps and the integration of the Web Pitcher in real coaching activities. In this context, the paper also contains a link through which researchers can register and use the Web Pitcher for their own scientific purposes, also beyond questions of public-speaker or charisma training.

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Cross-Linguistic Distinctions Between Professional and Non-Professional Speaking Styles

Cited by 4 publications

References 8 publications

The Trini Sing-Song: Sociophonetic variation in Trinidadian English prosody and differences to other varieties

The Trini Sing-Song: Sociophonetic variation in Trinidadian English prosody and differences to other varieties

Prosodic variation of English in Dominica, Grenada, and Trinidad

Computer-assisted prosody training: Improving public speakers' vocal charisma with the Web-Pitcher

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