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Pitch Reset
In speech, phonetic pitch reset occurs at the boundaries (pausa) between prosodic units. Over the course of such units, the median pitch of the voice declines from its initial value, sometimes reaching the lower end of the speaker's vocal range. Then, it must reset to a higher level if the person is to continue speaking. In non-tonal languages, the sudden increase in pitch is one of the principal auditory cues to the start of a new prosodic unit. In register tone languages which experience discrete downdrift, pitch reset is required as the tones approach the lower end of the speaker's comfort range, and in those languages which experience tone terracing, it is in addition required in order to maintain the tonal distinctions of the language. See also * Upstep In linguistics, upstep is a phonemic or phonetic upward shift of tone between the syllables or words of a tonal language. It is best known in the tonal languages of Sub-Saharan Africa. Upstep is a much rarer phenomenon tha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phonetics
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds or, in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. The field of phonetics is traditionally divided into three sub-disciplines on questions involved such as how humans plan and execute movements to produce speech (articulatory phonetics), how various movements affect the properties of the resulting sound (acoustic phonetics) or how humans convert sound waves to linguistic information (auditory phonetics). Traditionally, the minimal linguistic unit of phonetics is the phone (phonetics), phone—a speech sound in a language which differs from the phonological unit of phoneme; the phoneme is an abstract categorization of phones and it is also defined as the smallest unit that discerns meaning between sounds in any given language. Phonetics deals with two aspects of human speech: production ( ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pausa
In linguistics, pausa (Latin for 'break', from Greek παῦσις, ''pâusis'' 'stopping, ceasing') is the hiatus between prosodic declination units. The concept is somewhat broad, as it is primarily used to refer to allophones that occur in certain prosodic environments, and these environments vary between languages. Characteristics Some sound laws specifically operate only ''in pausa''. For example, certain phonemes may be pronounced differently at the beginning or the end of a word if no other word precedes or follows within the same prosodic unit, such as a word in the citation form. That is the case with the final-obstruent devoicing of German, Turkish, Russian, and other languages whose voiced obstruent consonants are devoiced pre-pausa and before voiceless consonants. The opposite environment is relevant in Spanish, whose voiced fricatives become stops post-pausa and after nasals. Such environments are often termed ''pre-pausal'' and ''post-pausal'', respectivel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prosodic Unit
In linguistics, a prosodic unit is a segment of speech that occurs with specific prosodic properties. These properties can be those of stress, intonation (a single pitch and rhythm contour), or tonal patterns. Prosodic units occur at a hierarchy of levels, from the syllable, the metrical foot and phonological word to the intonational unit (IU) and to a complete utterance. However, the term is often restricted to intermediate levels which do not have a dedicated terminology. Prosodic units do not generally correspond to syntactic units, such as phrases and clauses; it is thought that they reflect different aspects of how the brain processes speech, with prosodic units being generated through on-line interaction and processing, and with morphosyntactic units being more automated. Defining characteristics Prosodic units are characterized by several phonetic cues, such as pitch movement, pre-boundary lengthening, and pauses. Breathing, both inhalation and exhalation, only occ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Register Tone
Register or registration may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Music * Register (music), the relative "height" or range of a note, melody, part, instrument, etc. * ''Register'', a 2017 album by Travis Miller * Registration (organ), the art of combining the different sounds of a pipe organ to produce the desired sound Periodicals Australia * ''South Australian Register'', later ''The Register'', originally the ''South Australian Gazette and Colonial Register'' United Kingdom * '' Sheffield Register'', England * '' Socialist Register'', an annual British journal * ''The Register'', a technology news website United States * ''The Register'', one of the former names of ''The Westmoreland Republican'' * ''Federal Register'', a public journal of the United States federal government * '' Napa Valley Register'', Napa Valley, California * '' National Catholic Register'', the oldest national Catholic newspaper in the United States * '' New Haven Register'', Connecticut ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Downdrift
In phonetics, downdrift (also known as ''automatic downstep'') is the cumulative lowering of pitch in the course of a sentence due to interactions among tones in a tonal language. Downdrift often occurs when the tones in successive syllables are H L H (high, low, high) or H L L H (high, low, low, high). In this case the second high tone tends to be lower than the first. The effect can accumulate so that with each low tone, the pitch of the high tones becomes slightly lower, until the end of the intonational phrase, when the pitch is "reset". However, not every sequence of H L H leads to downdrift. In some languages, in some circumstances, the two high tones in a sequence H L H can be pronounced on the same level, with a "plateau" between them; that is, H L H changes to H H H. This occurs for example in Chichewa if the first H is a proclitic word, e.g. "of" + "Malawi" is pronounced "of Malawi", with a plateau. In other languages, in some circumstances, even longer sequences suc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tone Terracing
Tone terracing is a type of phonetic downdrift, where the high or mid tones, but not the low tone, shift downward in pitch ( downstep) after certain other tones. The result is that a tone may be realized at a certain pitch over a short stretch of speech shifts downward, then continues at its new level and then shifts downward again until the end of the prosodic contour is reached, at which point the pitch resets. A graph of the change in pitch over time of a particular tone resembles a terrace. Since the pitch of the low tone remains more-or-less constant at the lower end of the speaker's vocal range, and the other tones shift downward, the difference in their pitches narrows, eventually obscuring the tones altogether. Pitch reset is then required if the tone system is to continue to function. Tone terracing is particularly common in the languages of West Africa, where typically only the low tone causes downstep. However, a somewhat more intricate system is found in the Twi la ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Upstep
In linguistics, upstep is a phonemic or phonetic upward shift of tone between the syllables or words of a tonal language. It is best known in the tonal languages of Sub-Saharan Africa. Upstep is a much rarer phenomenon than its counterpart, downstep. The symbol for upstep in the International Phonetic Alphabet is a superscript upward arrow [] ([]). However, it is common, especially in the early research, to find a superscript (or sometimes subscript) inverted exclamation mark [] ([]) or [], because of typographical constraints. Hausa has upstep because of the interaction of tones when they are placed in context: : :''It's English.'' Upstep is superficially similar to pitch reset, which is nearly universal in the prosody of the world's languages. The most common prosodic contours occur in chunks with gradually declining pitch (here transcribed as a global fall, ��. Between such chunks, the pitch resets: :Been there. Done that. : Occurrence Upstep occurs in various Sub- ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
