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LRR 2023, 13(6): 201-224 |
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Sadeghi V, Sharifi Atashgah M, Emadi A. Phonetic Distinction between Simple Past and Present Perfect Verbs: A Perception Experiment. LRR 2023; 13 (6) :201-224
URL: http://lrr.modares.ac.ir/article-14-50644-en.html
URL: http://lrr.modares.ac.ir/article-14-50644-en.html
1- Associate Professor of Linguistics, Imam Khomeini International University, Qazvin, Iran , vsadeghi@hum.ikiu.ac.ir
2- Assistant Professor, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
3- M.A in Linguistics, Imam Khomeini International University, Qazvin, Iran
2- Assistant Professor, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
3- M.A in Linguistics, Imam Khomeini International University, Qazvin, Iran
Abstract: (2259 Views)
Stress is a linguistic property of a word that specifies which syllable in the word is stronger than any of the others. Early studies such as Fry (1955, 1958), Lieberman (1960), Beckman (1986), Harrington, Beckman, and Palethorpe (1998) (see also Laver, 1994 for an overview) have shown that there are clear acoustic differences between stressed and unstressed syllables: stressed syllables are realized with higher pitch, higher intensity, longer duration, and more peripheral vowel quality than unstressed syllables. Studies in many stress-accent languages show that the stressed realization of a syllable differs from the unstressed realization of the same syllable by having higher pitch. Also, results have showed that speakers consistently use duration to distinguish between open and central vowels that contrasted in stress at the word level. In contrast with F0 and duration, the relation of intensity variation in the speech signal to word stress is still controversial.
In this paper, we investigated the role of acoustic factors involved in perceptually differentiating simple past from present perfect verbs in Persian, through manipulation of fundamental frequency (F0) and duration. Thus, tokens were resynthesized from the phonetic forms of Persian simple past and present perfect verbs in which F0 and duration were manipulated in several steps. The target tokens were presented to some native Persian participants to identify as simple past or present perfect. Results suggested that Persian listeners’ judgements of the tense of the target tokens depend, to a great extent, on the local F0 values of the verbs’ syllables as any amount of increase in the local F0 points of the respective syllables can categorically change the listeners’ judgements about the temporal reading of the verbs involved. On the other hand, results for duration showed that values of this parameter fail to produce a significant effect on listeners’ judgements.
1. Introduction
Stress is a linguistic property of words. It specifies the syllable that is stronger than any of the others. Early studies have shown that there are clear acoustic differences between stressed and unstressed syllables: stressed syllables are realized with a higher pitch, higher intensity, longer duration, and more peripheral vowel quality than unstressed syllables (Sluijter and van Heuven, 1996). Studies in many stress-accent languages show that the stressed realization of a syllable differs from the unstressed realization of the same syllable by having a higher pitch. Also, results have shown that speakers consistently used duration to distinguish between open and central vowels that contrasted in stress at the word level, while stress contrast between open vowels at the sentence level was mainly cued by the accompanying intonational prominence contrast. In contrast with F0 and duration, the relation of intensity variation in the speech signal to word stress is still controversial. On the one hand, previous work has generally emphasized that intensity manipulations prove much weaker cues than duration in stress perception. On the other hand, several different operationalizations of intensity such as intensity summed over time (Beckman, 1986) and spectral tilt; i.e., the degree to which intensity changes as frequency increases (Sluijter and van Heuven, 1996a; Sluijter, van Heuven, and Pacilly, 1997), are consistent correlates of stress. For example, Sluijter and van Heuven (1996) argue that previous research which has shown loudness variation to be virtually inconsequential for stress perception is usually based on analyses that do not distinguish between word stress, on the one hand, and prominence resulting from pitch accent on the other. They notice that the traditional account of stress as a local increase in loudness seems justified if a more accurate measure of intensity is chosen.
Simple past and present perfect verbs in Persian are segmentally similar in colloquial speech and only different in terms of the stress position. The morphological structure of present perfect in Persian incudes two verbal morphemes: (1) the perfect marker /-e/ and (2) person and number marker. In colloquial speech, the perfect marker /-e/ is deleted and the following vowel (e.g., the vowel of the person and number marker) is pronounced longer than usual.
The present study is intended to investigate how simple past and present perfect verbs in Persian colloquial speech are acoustically differentiated and to what extent the acoustic cues to verb morphological identity are used in perception. We hypothesized that both F0 and duration can be used as reliable acoustic cues to perceptually distinguish simple past and present perfect verbs in Persian. The research is innovative in that it is the first experimental study that investigates the phonetic differences between simple past and present perfect verbs in Persian.
2. Methodology
In a perception experiment, we investigated the role of acoustic factors involved in perceptually differentiating simple past from present perfect verbs in Persian, through manipulation of fundamental frequency (F0) and duration. Thus, tokens were resynthesized from the phonetic forms of Persian simple past and present perfect verbs in which F0 and duration were manipulated in several steps. The target tokens were presented to some native Persian participants to decide whether they are simple past or present perfect. Twenty speakers of Standard Persian (10 male and 10 female) participated in the perception experiment.
Fundamental frequency and duration were examined in a perception experiment as the potential parameters (based on the production experiment) to distinguish between simple past and present perfect. Two verbs were chosen from the production experiment to be manipulated in three ways through several steps.
The first type of stimuli was created through 5 ten-Hz steps by increasing peak height of syllable A in simple past verbs (from 210 to 250 Hz and from 130 to 170 Hz for the verb /dozdidænd/ “steal-Past-3rd PL” and /dʒængidænd/ “fight- Past-3rd PL”, respectively) (Fig. 2). The second type of stimuli was made by increasing peak height of syllable B in present perfect verbs through 5 steps (from 134 to 184 Hz and from 133 to 173 Hz for the verbs “dozdidænd/ “steal-Past-3rd PL” and /dʒængidænd/ “fight- Past-3rd PL”, respectively (Fig. 2). Finally, the height of peak was kept constant for the respective verbs and the duration of syllable A in simple past verbs was increased through five 12-ms steps. The same procedure was applied for syllable B in present perfect verbs (Fig. 3).
3. Results
Results showed that the stimuli are perceived as simple past where syllable A is at least 15 Hz higher in pitch than syllable B. According to the results, the stimuli are perceived as present perfect where syllable B is at least 10 Hz higher in pitch than syllable A. Finally, the matching judgements for the stimulus pairs based on duration showed that the steps of duration yielded about 50 % identification responses irrespective of the type of stimuli (simple past or present perfect).
4. Conclusion
In general, the results of the perception experiment carried out in this research suggested that Persian listeners’ judgements of the tense of the target tokens depend, to a great extent, on the local F0 values of the verbs’ syllables as any amount of increase in the local F0 points of the respective syllables can categorically change the listeners’ judgements about the temporal reading of the verbs involved. On the other hand, results for duration showed that values of this parameter fail to produce a significant effect on listeners’ judgements.
In this paper, we investigated the role of acoustic factors involved in perceptually differentiating simple past from present perfect verbs in Persian, through manipulation of fundamental frequency (F0) and duration. Thus, tokens were resynthesized from the phonetic forms of Persian simple past and present perfect verbs in which F0 and duration were manipulated in several steps. The target tokens were presented to some native Persian participants to identify as simple past or present perfect. Results suggested that Persian listeners’ judgements of the tense of the target tokens depend, to a great extent, on the local F0 values of the verbs’ syllables as any amount of increase in the local F0 points of the respective syllables can categorically change the listeners’ judgements about the temporal reading of the verbs involved. On the other hand, results for duration showed that values of this parameter fail to produce a significant effect on listeners’ judgements.
1. Introduction
Stress is a linguistic property of words. It specifies the syllable that is stronger than any of the others. Early studies have shown that there are clear acoustic differences between stressed and unstressed syllables: stressed syllables are realized with a higher pitch, higher intensity, longer duration, and more peripheral vowel quality than unstressed syllables (Sluijter and van Heuven, 1996). Studies in many stress-accent languages show that the stressed realization of a syllable differs from the unstressed realization of the same syllable by having a higher pitch. Also, results have shown that speakers consistently used duration to distinguish between open and central vowels that contrasted in stress at the word level, while stress contrast between open vowels at the sentence level was mainly cued by the accompanying intonational prominence contrast. In contrast with F0 and duration, the relation of intensity variation in the speech signal to word stress is still controversial. On the one hand, previous work has generally emphasized that intensity manipulations prove much weaker cues than duration in stress perception. On the other hand, several different operationalizations of intensity such as intensity summed over time (Beckman, 1986) and spectral tilt; i.e., the degree to which intensity changes as frequency increases (Sluijter and van Heuven, 1996a; Sluijter, van Heuven, and Pacilly, 1997), are consistent correlates of stress. For example, Sluijter and van Heuven (1996) argue that previous research which has shown loudness variation to be virtually inconsequential for stress perception is usually based on analyses that do not distinguish between word stress, on the one hand, and prominence resulting from pitch accent on the other. They notice that the traditional account of stress as a local increase in loudness seems justified if a more accurate measure of intensity is chosen.
Simple past and present perfect verbs in Persian are segmentally similar in colloquial speech and only different in terms of the stress position. The morphological structure of present perfect in Persian incudes two verbal morphemes: (1) the perfect marker /-e/ and (2) person and number marker. In colloquial speech, the perfect marker /-e/ is deleted and the following vowel (e.g., the vowel of the person and number marker) is pronounced longer than usual.
The present study is intended to investigate how simple past and present perfect verbs in Persian colloquial speech are acoustically differentiated and to what extent the acoustic cues to verb morphological identity are used in perception. We hypothesized that both F0 and duration can be used as reliable acoustic cues to perceptually distinguish simple past and present perfect verbs in Persian. The research is innovative in that it is the first experimental study that investigates the phonetic differences between simple past and present perfect verbs in Persian.
2. Methodology
In a perception experiment, we investigated the role of acoustic factors involved in perceptually differentiating simple past from present perfect verbs in Persian, through manipulation of fundamental frequency (F0) and duration. Thus, tokens were resynthesized from the phonetic forms of Persian simple past and present perfect verbs in which F0 and duration were manipulated in several steps. The target tokens were presented to some native Persian participants to decide whether they are simple past or present perfect. Twenty speakers of Standard Persian (10 male and 10 female) participated in the perception experiment.
Fundamental frequency and duration were examined in a perception experiment as the potential parameters (based on the production experiment) to distinguish between simple past and present perfect. Two verbs were chosen from the production experiment to be manipulated in three ways through several steps.
The first type of stimuli was created through 5 ten-Hz steps by increasing peak height of syllable A in simple past verbs (from 210 to 250 Hz and from 130 to 170 Hz for the verb /dozdidænd/ “steal-Past-3rd PL” and /dʒængidænd/ “fight- Past-3rd PL”, respectively) (Fig. 2). The second type of stimuli was made by increasing peak height of syllable B in present perfect verbs through 5 steps (from 134 to 184 Hz and from 133 to 173 Hz for the verbs “dozdidænd/ “steal-Past-3rd PL” and /dʒængidænd/ “fight- Past-3rd PL”, respectively (Fig. 2). Finally, the height of peak was kept constant for the respective verbs and the duration of syllable A in simple past verbs was increased through five 12-ms steps. The same procedure was applied for syllable B in present perfect verbs (Fig. 3).
3. Results
Results showed that the stimuli are perceived as simple past where syllable A is at least 15 Hz higher in pitch than syllable B. According to the results, the stimuli are perceived as present perfect where syllable B is at least 10 Hz higher in pitch than syllable A. Finally, the matching judgements for the stimulus pairs based on duration showed that the steps of duration yielded about 50 % identification responses irrespective of the type of stimuli (simple past or present perfect).
4. Conclusion
In general, the results of the perception experiment carried out in this research suggested that Persian listeners’ judgements of the tense of the target tokens depend, to a great extent, on the local F0 values of the verbs’ syllables as any amount of increase in the local F0 points of the respective syllables can categorically change the listeners’ judgements about the temporal reading of the verbs involved. On the other hand, results for duration showed that values of this parameter fail to produce a significant effect on listeners’ judgements.
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