Forms and Positions for PUSH Units An inventory of Prosodic Unit Forms and Functions for Romanian Intonation Doina Jitcă 1 ,Vasile Apopei 1 , Magdalena Jitcă 2 1 Institute for Computer Science, Romanian Academy, Iasi Branch, Romania 2 Faculty of Computer Science, University “Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, Iasi, Romania Phrase partitioning into AU/AUG structures An Accentual Unit of an Intonation Contour has: An elementary melodic contour pattern A range and a position in the F0 scale tonal ratios with other AUs within a non-elementary melodic contour at Accentual Unit Group level An Accentual Unit Group (AUG) is defined as a sintagmatic relation between two of its constituents An AUG melodic contour is defined as a tonal ratio sequence between its AU/AUG constituents and it may be present at different level of the prosodic tree Examples of Romanian melodic contours The Functional Prosodic Unit Categories PUSH (PH) units contribute to pushing forward the communication act by creating high tension segments of speech with target tones near the top level of the parent unit F0 range. POP (PO) units correspond to the relaxed or low tension speech segments within the communication act by targeting the tones lower than those of the corresponding PUSH unit. The name “POP” suggest that a F0 range POP unit is related to a PUSH unit by the means of a tonal contrast Focus (F/f ) units play a role only in word neutral focusing (F-more prominent/ f-less prominent). The acoustical evidences for a focused unit consist in the tonal return towards the end of the unit, at the same tone level as in the beginning Link (L) units generate tonal linking between units of the previous types, without generating neutral or contrastive focus at the related word level PUSH-DOWN (PD) units generate a PUSH event during the accented syllable and then bring the tone at low level on the next unaccented one/ones PUSH-DOWN (PD+F) units generate a PUSH event in the beginning of the accented syllable and during the most part of vowel the tone decreases until the end of this syllable, generating a contrastive focus POP-UP (PU) units first perform the POP event (generated by a low target tone) during the accented syllable and then increase the tone during the unaccented one/ones POP*+PH units perform a POP event during the stressed syllable and then a rising movement until the Top level, generating a secondary PUSH event Conclusions The intonation meaning must be thought in relation with the textual units (words and word groups) to whom the elementary and non- elementary intonation units apply “prosodic accents”. We consider these “prosodic accents” as functions at the communicative act level. They may or may not be significant at semantic level. The AUGs are considered in essence tonal contrasts between the tonal characteristics of two of its component units (a high unit vs. a low one). Each group unit from the utterance tree contains a local focus. By relating all the prosodic units (elementary and nonelementary) into a functional hierarchy, a good understanding of different types of semantic accentuation and deaccentuation events can be achieved. Without special training, native speakers can’t identify the functional components of an intonation contour by only performing a visual and perceptual analysis. These are new elements of the intonation modeling that have to be taught to students as elementary melodic contours and after that, as rules for combining them into complex intonational contours corresponding to different syntactic structures. T 2 T 3 F PH PO B 1 T 1 B 2 B 3 time F0 T 2 T 3 B 1 T 1 B 2 B 3 time F0 AU1 AU2 AU5 AU6 AU3 AU4 AUG1 AUG3 AUG2 Given The Autosegmental-Metrical model (D.R. Ladd) Prosodic domain trees describe hierarchical structures of the tunes……………………………………………………………………. A Weak/ Strong partitioning of prosodic domains is performed The prosodic trees consist of elementary constituents (leaves) and non-elementary constituents (nodes)…………………………… Each prosodic domain contains a focus event. There are narrow domains and broad domains……………………………… The prosodic domains are viewed as a syntagmatic relation between two constituents…………………………………………… The IPO model works with pitch movements as units (phonetically defined) and with their combination into different configurations, that are both in essence melodic contours with beginning and ending tones. The advantage of working with pitch events as units is the possibility to annotate the events of type focus without accent……………. The ToBI system defines a set of pitch contour events that are necessary for a phonological understanding of the intonation contours.................. New The prosodic units of the utterance trees are functional units and their label sequences describe the local tunes at each level of the hierarchy…………………………………………………………… A functional unit sequence partitioning is performed…………… Elementary prosodic units – Accentual Units (AU) / non- elementary units - Accentual Unit Groups (AUG)……………… A set of functions at the communicative act level we applied to the partition constituents (focus is one of the functions)………….. The syntagmatic relation between two constituents of a unit is suggested by applying them the PUSH / POP functions………….. AUs and AUGs are melodic contours. The AU types are related to a set of F0 pattern categories that are characterized phonetically by F0 pattern skeletons and phonologically (by means of the function set). AUs and AUGs are functionally equivalent. The AUG description as functional label sequences gives them a position into the relative F0 scale of the parent unit) Phonological events are low level events comparatively to the functional events generated by elementary or non-elementary melodic contours………………………………………………….. Lu-’mi-na e-’ra ’sla-bă dar re-cu-nos-’cu o ’fă-ră gre-u-’ta-te Speaker ID Prosodically annotated text by means of functional labels BC (Lu‟mina PH / e‟ra L / „slabă PU ) PH+F /(dar o recunos‟cu PH /fără greu‟tate PO ) PO (PH/L/PU) PH+F / (PH/PO) PO JD ((Lu‟mina PH /e‟ra L / „slabă PO*+PH ) PH /dar o recunos‟cu F /‟fără greutate PO (PH/L/PO*+PH) PH / F/ PO Romanian Intonation Modelling H* PH H* L+H* PH L+H* L*H Top line PH L*H T 2 T 3 F PH PO B 1 T 1 B 2 B 3 time F 0 T 2 T 3 f PH PO B 1 T 1 B 2 B 3 time F0 PH Unit in first position PH Unit in middle position Partial Intonation Contours as F0 contour envelopes H* PD H* H+L* PD+F H+L* Bottom line PH+F Top line Derived PUSH Units PUSH-Down PUSH-Down and focus PUSH and neutral focus Forms for POP, FOCUS and LINK Units L* Bottom line PO L* H* Bottom line PO H* H+!H* Bottom line PO H+!H * H* F H* Bottom line TOP Line H* f H* L*+H Bottom line PU L*+H Derived POP Units Bottom line PU L* H* Bottom line L Top line Top line Top line Top line Bottom line Bottom line Bottom line PO*+PH Top line POP-UP with Major focus POP-UP with Minor focus POP with L*H PA Major neutral FOCUS Minor neutral FOCUS Tonal Linking POP with an implicit focus POP with deaccentuation POP with partial deaccentuation PUSH without focus PUSH with L+H* PA PUSH as secondary event