In two experiments, five phoneticians rated the dissimilarity of two pitch contours to investigate whether important audible differences would correspond with visually conspicuous differences between displayed pitch contours. Results indicate that visual feedback may be very effective in intonation training if auditorily relevant features of pitch…

This study investigated the effectiveness of four different methods for measuring the similarity of pitch contours. The correlation coefficient between two normalized contours was the best method; however, if pitch range is important, the mean distance and the root-mean-square distance should be considered first in automatic training in…

Describes how to use intonation and dialog context to improve the performance of an automatic speech-recognition system. Experiments utilized the DCIEM Maptask corpus, using a separate bigram language model for each type of move and showing that, with the correct move-specific language model for each utterance in the test set, the recognizer's…

Reviews current intonational research that is relevant to teaching and presents implications for pedagogy. Argues there are two primary reasons for a lack of innovation in intonation teaching materials: 1) Current materials are based on an inadequate view of the functions of intonation; 2) materials lack a communicative purpose. (Author/VWL)

Presents an approach to teaching pronunciation to Chinese students of English that has been successful in improving students' pronunciation and intonation, as well as their basic skills in English. The approach compares Chinese and English sound systems, advocates perception before production, and emphasizes teaching in a meaningful and…

Discusses the use of focus, or intonational prominence, to create meaning for learners of English. Presents an alternative approach to predicting focus that appeals to functional and meaning regularities that do not depend on extensive written input and are more easily adaptable to normal conversation. (Author/VWL)

The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of sight-singing instruction using specific pitch skills emphasizing scale degree and harmonic function. Fifteen pitch skills encompassing scalar, cadential, and chordal tasks were included in the study. Over a 12-week period, two randomly assigned groups of novice high school singers…

In the context of classroom communication, there is a premium on the clarity of the message, and instructors will typically employ multiple linguistic cues to highlight information structure. Using a model of intonation in discourse [Brazil, D. (1986). "The communicative value of intonation in English." Birmingham, England: University of…

In Mandarin Chinese, word meaning is partially determined by lexical tone (Wang, 1973). Previous studies suggest that lexical tone is processed as linguistic information and not as pure tonal information (Gandour, 1998; Van Lanker & Fromkin, 1973). The current study explored the online processing of lexical tones. Event-related potentials were…

The present study investigated 3-year-old children's perception and production of Mandarin lexical tones in monosyllabic words. Thirteen 3-year-old, Mandarin-speaking children participated in the study. Tone perception was examined by a picture-pointing task, and tone production was investigated by picture naming. To compare children's productions…

A large percentage of patients who have undergone laryngectomy to treat advanced laryngeal cancer rely on an electrolarynx (EL) to communicate verbally. Although serviceable, EL speech is plagued by shortcomings in both sound quality and intelligibility. This study sought to better quantify the relative contributions of previously identified…

This paper reports on an investigation about the relation between a student's conscious awareness of the structure of a sentence and the degree of his/her intonation accuracy as well as his/her reading comprehension. The research was done based on the hypothesis that: "if the students are made conscious of the infrastructure of lengthy…

A study of the phonetics of everyday conversational interaction looked specifically at the occurrence of the "oh" particle, a signal of the receipt of new information. Focus was on the phonetic characteristics of the "oh" utterance in this context. Data were drawn from British and American recorded telephone conversations. It was observed that…

The recitation of a nineteenth century Swahili poem is analyzed for the devices in spoken Swahili used by the performer to keep the audience's attention. The poem has a very formal structure in both rhyme, rhythm, and words linking one stanza to the next, giving it great rigidity. The primary focus of the analysis is on three variables:…

As an example leading toward a social grammar of language, three emotions are analyzed in English and Yoruba. Certain communication features in English that lie in intonation and stress require a change of grammar in Yoruba and that these changes are subject to further categorization through status and solidarity. (Author/RM)