Language redundancy predicts syllabic duration and the spectral characteristics of vocalic syllable nuclei

Abstract

The language redundancy of a syllable, measured by its predictability given its context and inherent frequency, has been shown to have a strong inverse relationship with syllabic duration. This relationship is predicted by the smooth signal redundancy hypothesis, which proposes that robust communication in a noisy environment can be achieved with an inverse relationship between language redundancy and the predictability given acoustic observations (acoustic redundancy). A general version of the hypothesis predicts similar relationships between the spectral characteristics of speech and language redundancy. However, investigating this claim is hampered by difficulties in measuring the spectral characteristics of speech within large conversational corpora, and difficulties in forming models of acoustic redundancy based on these spectral characteristics. This paper addresses these difficulties by testing the smooth signal redundancy hypothesis with a very high-quality corpus collected for speech synthesis, and presents both durational and spectral data from vowel nuclei on a vowel-by-vowel basis. Results confirm the duration/language redundancy results achieved in previous work, and show a significant relationship between language redundancy factors and the first two formants, although these results vary considerably by vowel. In general, however, vowels show increased centralization with increased language redundancy.

Dimensions of Segmental Variability: Interaction of Prosody and Surprisal in Six Languages

“…Results of the study showed that vowels were more centralized with increased language redundancy (i.e., higher predictability), vowel quality in prominent syllables was more distinct than in syllables that were not prominent, and spectral characteristics of vowels were also more distinct in syllables before prosodic boundaries than in syllables at word-or at no boundary. Aylett and Turk (2006) concluded that language redundancy and acoustic redundancy show an inverse relationship which is mediated and implemented through prosodic structure.…”

“…Aylett and Turk (2006) investigated the influence of prosodic structure and predictability on vowel characteristics in General American English read speech. Results of the study showed that vowels were more centralized with increased language redundancy (i.e., higher predictability), vowel quality in prominent syllables was more distinct than in syllables that were not prominent, and spectral characteristics of vowels were also more distinct in syllables before prosodic boundaries than in syllables at word-or at no boundary.…”

“…Following Aylett and Turk (2006), the prosodic model used in the current study comprises prominence and boundary. Prominence was defined as a binary factor using primary lexical stress (stressed vs. unstressed) based on the BonnTempo corpus.…”

“…The factor Boundary involved two levels: none and a high likelihood of a prosodic boundary. A high likelihood of a prosodic boundary was marked when a pause of at least 100 ms followed the syllable that included the segments under analysis (Aylett and Turk, 2006).…”

Phonetic reduction and informational redundancy in self-initiated self-repair in Dutch

“…A number of studies (Jurafsky et al 2001, Bell et al 2003, Pluymaekers et al 2005a, Aylett and Turk 2006 have assessed the correlation between a measure of informational redundancy and a measure of phonetic reductionfor example the number of absent segments or syllables relative to the word's canonical realisation -and found it to be significant. These studies have two common features.…”