Sijia Zhang's ARIA project:听The Status of Mid-Level Nuclear Accents in English
听
According to most current approaches to intonational phonology, all intonation contours in spoken English consist of a sequence of high-pitched (H) and low-pitched (L) tones and combinations thereof, with an explicit omission of a mid-level tonal primitive. In order to represent mid-level tones, modern models and transcription systems must therefore employ theoretical devices that may not always be empirically motivated. For instance, the currently dominant intonation labeling system ToBI (i.e. Tones and Break indices), requires a complex downstepped high accent (H+!H*) to represent mid-level accents, and models terminal flat mid-tones as a combination of H and L phrasal tones (H-L%), a configuration which should ideally be reserved to a falling rather than a flat terminal pattern. Moreover, according to our observations during this past year, several additional issues arise regarding ToBI鈥檚 proposed treatment of English mid-level contours when they are applied to utterances containing different numbers of stressed and accented syllables. For instance, when the contour is applied to utterances containing one stressed syllable (e.g. tomorrow) as opposed to longer utterances (e.g. tomorrow morning), the accentual mid-tone occurs after a rise rather than a fall, and cannot therefore be said to be downstepped after a previous high target.
This project develops and tests the hypothesis that mid-level tones (e.g. mid accents, mid boundary tones) should be treated as primitives in models of English intonation in addition to high and low tones. In order to do this, we conduct an exploratory study on the so-called Terrace tone group (O鈥機onnor & Arnold 1973) by analyzing observational data obtained online. With the help of Praat scripts to measure pitch values at different locations, we compare the intonational patterns of Terrace that are illustrated in O鈥機onnor & Arnold (1973) and those appear in spontaneous conversations. We design a series of imitation-and-completion production tasks, a method that has been successfully employed to elicit specific intonation contour types across utterances of variable metrical structure (cf. Torreira & Grice, 2018). The stimuli are originally from a recording of a native English speaker, and are manipulated through Praat scripts, including the adjustment of the scaling of the mid-level tones modeled by the normalized pitch values in the examples of O鈥機onnor & Arnold (1973), inserting white noise, etc. In an initial training phase, experimental participants hear short utterances with a mid-level pitch contour and are asked to imitate these sentences as closely as possible with the same intonation. In the experimental phase, participants are primed to keep using the same intonation while producing longer utterances with variable metrical structures. The experiment is set up in Gorilla, and participants are asked to run the experiment at home through Gorilla website. The recordings will be annotated and segmented in Praat; pitch values will be measured at different locations. We will examine visual displays of the data carefully, and analyze relevant quantitative trends using mixed-effects regression models in R software.
Motivation and Learning Objectives
This ARIA project offers me a precious opportunity to conduct a research project that I am interested in, and get one-to-one supervision by a professor who matches my research interests. I am able to gain incredible research experience and practice some handy skills that could be useful to my future study and career. For example, I have learned how to critically consider competing analyses of the same phenomenon, and to identify implicit points of tensions in the literature. Such critical thinking skills will be crucial to my future research, especially since I plan to pursue a PhD in linguistics after my undergraduate studies. Moreover, I have also obtained practical experience designing and running psycholinguistic experiments, and acquired technical skills in data analysis, speech analysis and manipulation as well as scripting in the Praat software, in preparation for
my honors thesis in the coming academic year.
Highlights and Challenges
Due to the outbreak of the pandemic, the project had to be conducted remotely, which has made the communication with my supervisor sometimes quite challenging, especially since we were in different time zones. Yet, I still met with him regularly every week to exchange thoughts and report new progress. I think one of the highlights during my summer project was the time when I realized that it was not that important what the results of my experiment were, but it was the skills that I acquired and the problems that I overcame that really mattered.
Future Career
This ARIA project has further developed my interests in phonetics and phonology, as I have known more about the current literature and observed several unsolved issues in the recent studies. Inspired by this project, I hope to devote my honors thesis to a topic in phonetics and phonology in the following academic year. I am keen on continuing my linguistics research and pursuing a PhD degree in linguistics in future to improve the modern intonation models and solve the issues omitted by previous scholars.
Appreciation
I am more than grateful for the generosity and kindness of Mr. Harry Samuel. Without his donation, I would not have been able to be funded to conduct my project and gain this valuable experience.
