@article {481, title = {About good and bad prosody}, year = {2020}, publisher = {Nederlandse Vereniging voor Fonetische Wetenschappen}, address = {online}, abstract = {Not all speakers are equally good. For instance, at a scientific conference where one can witness many different speakers, there typically tend to be presenters who are engaging, whereas others are boring. The difference in speaking style between good and bad speakers may be partly related to differences in the way they supplement their utterances with appropriate prosodic structures. In this talk, I will discuss research we did on the extent to which the goodness of a speaking style depends on both functional and formal properties of prosody. The first part of my talk will zoom in on the extent to which quality differences relate to differences in pitch accent distribution. The second part discusses joint work with Constantijn Kaland on the perceived quality of variation in speech rhythm.}, author = {Marc Swerts} } @article {473, title = {Prosodic phrasing of short left-dislocated adverbial adjuncts in Brazilian Portuguese}, year = {2020}, publisher = {Nederlandse Vereniging voor Fonetische Wetenschappen}, address = {online}, abstract = {We explore the prosodic configuration of short left-dislocated adverbial adjuncts in Brazilian Portuguese (BP), as {\textquotedblleft}Amanh{\~a}{\textquotedblright} in {\textquotedblleft}Amanh{\~a}, nosso juiz decidir{\'a} o caso{\textquotedblright} {\textendash} for the English {\textquotedblleft}Tomorrow our judge will adjudicate the case{\textquotedblright}. Specifically, we discuss how the prosodic configuration of these constituents changes depending on whether they represent neutral or topicalized adverbial adjuncts. Our hypothesis is that the short left-dislocated adverbial adjuncts induces an intonational phrase (IP) boundary when it is topicalized, but not when it occurs after a neutral adjunct. We analyzed speech recordings from thirteen BP speakers (all female, native speakers of S{\~a}o Paulo State variety of BP), and measured a set of phonetic cues that have previously been associated with IP boundaries: pause, duration and F0 variation. Our speakers were asked to read (three times) a set of utterances with left-dislocated adverbial adjuncts. Adverbial adjuncts utterances were included in broader contexts that were semantically manipulated to favor both neutral and topicalized readings. The contexts were randomized and mixed with distractors. The results confirm that the prosodic phrasings of the short adverbial adjuncts depended on the context. Topicalized dislocated adverbs appear to differ from neutral ones in that: (i) they are more frequently marked by the occurrence of final boundary tones (H\% and L\%); (ii) the pauses post adjunct are more frequent in topicalized contexts, and also appear to be longer on average than in neutral contexts (topicalized: 95 ms; neutral ones: 39ms) and (iii) preboundary lengthening occurs more consistently in topicalized adverbial adjuncts. 1 S{\~a}o}, author = {Carvalho, Tainan and Tenani, Luciani and Marc Swerts} } @article {467, title = {Poster: Auditory and Visual Cues in the Production and Perception of Mandarin Tones}, year = {2019}, publisher = {Nederlandse Vereniging voor Fonetische Wetenschappen}, address = {Amsterdam, The Netherlands}, abstract = {Which acoustic and visual cues can be used to classify Mandarin tones? Furthermore, are these cues the same for producers (i.e., the ground truth) and (tone-na{\"\i}ve) perceivers? To address these questions we video-taped four Mandarin speakers while they produced ten syllables with four Mandarin tones, i.e. forty words in two styles (natural and teaching), totaling 160 stimuli. The audiovisual stimuli were subsequently presented to 43 tone-na{\"\i}ve participants in a tone identification task. Basic acoustic and visual features were extracted. We used decision trees and machine learning to identify the most important acoustic and visual features for classifying the tones. These features were identified separately for the tones as produced by the four speakers and for the tones as identified by the 43 perceivers. Based on previous work, we expected that acoustic features would be more relevant than visual features, but that non-native perceivers might still benefit from the visual signal. The results showed that acoustic features were ranked higher than the visual features for tone classification, both for the classification of the intended and the perceived tone. However, tone perceivers did revert to the use of visual information in certain cases. So, while visual information does not seem to play a significant role in native speakers{\textquoteright} tone production, tone-na{\"\i}ve perceivers do sometimes consider visual information in their tone identification.}, author = {Yueqiao Han and Castro Ferreira, Thiago and Martijn Goudbeek and Maria Mos and Marc Swerts} } @article {449, title = {Mandarin tone identification by musicians and non-musicians: effects of modality and speaking style}, year = {2018}, publisher = {Nederlandse Vereniging voor Fonetische Wetenschappen}, address = {Amsterdam, The Netherlands}, abstract = {A considerable number of studies have shown that musical ability has a positive effect on second language learning. Extending the existing body of work, this study investigates the combined effects of musical ability, modality and speaking style on Mandarin tone identification in tone-na{\"\i}ve listeners. To examine the effects of visual information and hyperarticulated speech, Mandarin tones elicited in two speaking styles (natural and teaching style) were presented in audio-only or audiovisual modality to listeners with or without musical experience. The Goldsmith Musicality Index was used to measure the musical aptitude of the participants. Musicians generally outperformed non-musicians in a tone identification task, and modality and speaking style both affected the tone identification: participants performed better in the audiovisual and teaching style conditions. In addition, the tones differed in recognition: the identification of tone 3 (a low-falling-rising) proved the easiest and all participants had more difficulty identifying tone 4 (a high-falling). Musical training was the most important predictor for Mandarin tone perception. These findings suggest that learning to perceive Mandarin tones benefits from musical expertise, visual information and hyperarticulated speaking style.}, keywords = {Mandarin tone identification; audiovisual modality; speaking style; musicians and non-musicians}, author = {Yueqiao Han and Martijn Goudbeek and Maria Mos and Marc Swerts} } @article {339, title = {Audiovisual cues to a speaker{\textquoteright}s confidence level}, year = {2006}, publisher = {Nederlandse Vereniging voor Fonetische Wetenschappen}, address = {Nijmegen, The Netherlands}, abstract = {

I will present the results of a number of experiments on the role of audiovisual prosody for signalling and detecting meta-cognitive information in question-answering. The first study consists of an experiment in which participants are asked factual questions in a conversational setting, while they are being filmed. Statistical analyses bring to light that a speakers{\textquoteright} confidence level is cued by a number of visual and verbal properties. Interestingly, it appears that answers tend to have a higher number of marked auditive and visual feature settings, including divergences of the neutral facial expression, when a speaker{\textquoteright}s confidence level is low, while the reverse is true for non-answers. The second study is a perception experiment, in which a selection of the utterances from the first study is presented to participants in one of three conditions: vision only, sound only or vision+sound. Results reveal that human observers can reliably distinguish high confidence responses from low confidence responses in all three conditions, be it that answers are easier than non-answers, and that a bimodal presentation of the stimuli is easier than the unimodal counterparts. The talk will end with some perspectives on related work about difference in the expression of confidence level between speakers who differ in age and cultural background.

}, author = {Marc Swerts} } @article {368, title = {Audiovisual cues to uncertainty}, year = {2003}, publisher = {Nederlandse Vereniging voor Fonetische Wetenschappen}, address = {Tilburg, The Netherlands}, abstract = {

Uncertainty is an inherent element of human-machine communication. Uncertainty is often not made explicit in the system{\textquoteright}s output, nor have there been many efforts to detect uncertainty in users{\textquoteright} reactions. Our work concerned with the expression of (degree of) uncertainty in spoken interactions. It focuses on the production and perception of auditory and visual cues, in isolation and in combination. The ultimate goal is to implement possible audiovisual cues to uncertainty in a synthetic talking head of an embodied conversational agent (ECA). We conjecture that a user{\textquoteright}s acceptance of incorrect system output is higher if the system made it clear in its self- presentation that it is not sure about the answer. Our approach builds on previous studies on the so-called Feeling-of-Knowing (FOK) (e.g. Smith and Clark, 1993), be it that we also include possible visual cues to FOK. Following earlier procedures, our study A consists of three parts: first, in an individually performed test, subjects are instructed to answer 40 factual questions (e.g. what is the capital of Switzerland?, who wrote Hamlet?); questions are posed by the experimentor whom the subjects cannot see, and the responses by the subject are videotaped (front view of head). After this test, the same sequence of questions is again presented to them, but now they have to express on a 7-point scale how sure they are that they would recognize the correct answer if they would have to find it in a multiple-choice test. The final test consists of this actual multiple-choice test. All utterances from the first test of Study A (800 in total) were transcribed orthographically and manually labelled regarding a number of auditive and visual features by four independent transcribers on the basis of an explicit labelling protocol, which included various double-checks. On average, subjects knew the answer to 30 of the 40 questions. When they did not know or could not remember the answer, they sometimes made a guess or gave a non- answer. It appears that their FOK scores not only correlate with their performance in the third multiple-choice test, but also with particular features of the utterances of the first test: lower scores, in line with previous results, correlate with long delay, the occurrence of filled pauses and question intonation. In addition, it appears that speakers tend to use more words, when they have a lower FOK. Regarding the visual cues, low FOK is reflected in averted gaze, more head movements, eyebrow frowning, and overall more body movement. Also, a puzzling look appears to correlate with low FOK, whereas a self-congratulatory expression is more typical for high FOK answers. The goal of our Study B is to explore whether observers of the speakers{\textquoteright} answers of Study A are able to guess these speakers{\textquoteright} FOK scores. In particular, we are interested in whether a bimodal presentation of stimuli leads to better FOK predictions than the unimodal components in isolation. To test this, we are currently preparing a perception test in which a subset of the utterances of Study A will be presented to subjects. These are instructed to guess what the speaker{\textquoteright}s FOK was when s/he gave an answer (cfr. Brennan and Williams, 1995). Stimuli will be presented in three conditions: image only, sound only, both image and sound. From the original 800 responses, we select 60 utterances, with an equal amount of answers and non- answers, and an even distribution of high and low FOK scores. While we expect that we get the best performance for bimodal stimuli, it remains an interesting empirical question whether the auditory or the visual features from the unimodal stimuli will turn out to be more informative for FOK predictions. The experiment is currently taking place. Results of this additional test will also be discussed in my talk.

}, author = {Marc Swerts} } @article {230, title = {"Ik was toch wel blij dat ik van mijn hobby mijn beroep kon maken" - De uitspraak van het possessivum mijn in het Standaardnederlands}, year = {2003}, publisher = {Nederlandse Vereniging voor Fonetische Wetenschappen}, address = {Utrecht, The Netherlands}, abstract = {

In het kader van het VNC-project Variatie in de uitspraak van het Standaardnederlands werd een sociolingu{\"\i}stisch interview afgenomen van 80 Vlaamse en 80 Nederlandse leraren Nederlands. De steekproef was gestratificeerd naar regio (4 regio{\textquoteright}s in Vlaanderen, 4 in Nederland), sekse (evenveel mannen als vrouwen) en leeftijd (de helft van de sprekers is geboren voor 1955, de andere helft na 1960). De spontane spraak die in het kader van dit project verzameld werd, vormt momenteel de basis voor onderzoek naar reductieverschijnselen in de standaardtaal. In deze presentatie brengen we verslag uit van een studie naar de uitspraak van het possessivum mijn. De 160 gesprekken bevatten in totaal 1253 realisaties van mijn. De stimuli werden gescoord door drie beoordelaars via een internetapplicatie. In de literatuur worden doorgaans twee uitspraakvarianten onderscheiden: de {\textquoteright}volle{\textquoteright} vorm mijn en de {\textquoteright}doffe{\textquoteright} vorm m{\textquoteright}n. We gaan na of dit inderdaad de enige varianten zijn die in ons corpus voorkomen. Vervolgens onderzoeken we de invloed van de variabelen land, leeftijd en sekse, en besteden daarbij ook aandacht aan factoren als aanwezigheid van klemtoon, toepassing van taalnormen en regionale herkomst van de spreker.

}, author = {Hanne Kloots and Steven Gillis and Marc Swerts} } @article {269, title = {Transcriptie van zinsprominentie, klankverlenging en prosodische grenzen door absolute beginners.}, year = {2001}, publisher = {Nederlandse Vereniging voor Fonetische Wetenschappen}, address = {Utrecht, The Netherlands}, abstract = {

Delen van het Corpus Gesproken Nederlands moeten worden verrijkt met een prosodische annotatie. In een pilootstudie gaan we na hoe goed na{\"\i}eve (d.w.z. zonder prosodisch-fonetische scholing) transcribenten in staat zijn om, aan de hand van een schriftelijk instructieprotocol en na een relatief korte oefenfase met feedback, te komen tot consistente transcriptie van (i) zinsprominenties (wel/niet geaccentueerde syllabe), (ii) van prosodische grenzen (zwaar, licht, geen) en (iii) van opvallende klankverlenging (wel, niet). Vier Vlaamse (Antwerpen, Gent) en vier Nederlandse (Utrecht, Leiden) na{\"\i}eve transcribenten annoteerden ieder dezelfde Vlaamse, resp. Nederlandse spraakfragmenten, met per transcribent in totaal 45 minuten spraakgeluid, over een periode van ca. 6 weken. We presenteren een overzicht van de resultaten, met de nadruk op de mate van overeenstemming tussen de vier transcibenten per prosodisch verschijnsel per taalvari{\"e}teit. Aan de hand van de bevindingen kan worden beslist of en voor welke taken inschakeling van (goedkope) na{\"\i}eve transcribenten een voor het onderzoeksveld voldoende bruikbare prosodische annotatie oplevert.

}, author = {Jeska Buhmann and Johanneke Caspers and Vincent van Heuven and Heleen Hoekstra and Jean-Pierre Martens and Marc Swerts} }