Intonational phonology

Beyond this, we again find that there is httle agreement about how to describe pitch accents and boundary tones. Some theories state there are a fixed inventory of these, while some describe them with continuous parameters. The nature of pitch accents and boundary tones is disputed, with some theories describing them as tones or levels while others say their characteristic properly is pitch movement. One prominent theory states that we have an intonational phonology that parallels normal phonology, and as such we have inventories of contrasting units (sometimes called... 

Articles on all the models and techniques described here are readily available, but there are few which consider all models together and offer comparisons. The best account of the AM model is given by Ladd [269]. Ladd not only describes the model and its developmenL but also serves as a solid introduction to the whole field of intonational phonology and the practical phonetics associated with it. Accounts of the INTSINT model are given in Hirst [212], the Tilt model in Taylor [436], the Fujisaki model in Fujisaki [166], the SFC model in Bailly and Holm [31], the Dutch model in [447], the British school in O Connor and Arnold [333]. 

Ladd, D. R. Intonational Phonology. Cambridge Studies in Linguistics. Cambridge University Press, 1996. 

Ladd, D. R. Intonational Phonology. Cambridge Cambridge University Press (1996). Ladd, D. R., and Silverman, K. E. A. Vowel intrinsic pitch in connected speech. Pho-netica 41 (1984), 31-40. 

Emphasis, prominence, accent and stress are all terms used to indicate the relative strength of a unit in speech. These terms are used with a variety of definitions in the literature, so to avoid confusion we will use these these terms as follows. Stress indicates lexical stress, which is an inherent property of words, and indicates for instance that the first syllable in table is stronger than the second, while the second syllable in machine is stronger than the first. We discuss this type of stress more fully in the section on phonology in Chapter 7. Prominence is used to indicate the strength of a word, syllable or phrase when it is used in a sentence. We will use the term accent solely to indicate intonational phenomena associated with pitch, and emphasis to indicate a specific use of prominence in discourse. 

Figure 9.2 High Fall, "Anna came with Manny 1 . This shape corresponds to a British high fall , + raised or pitch level 4. In this particular utterance there is still a single intonation phrase, and the word "anna also has an accent, but this accent is pre-nuclear. Some may argue that there is no phonological distinction between fall and high fall, and that the high fall is really just an extra prominent fall.

The Tilt intonation model developed by Taylor [434] [439] [436] was developed with the explicit intent of creating a practical, engineering model of intonation. To this extent, issues of pmely linguistic concern (such as phonological rules in the AM model) or biological plausibility, as in the... 

Kohler, K. J. Terminal intonation patterns in single-accent utterances of German Pho-neties, phonology and semanties. In Studies in German Intonation, K. J. Kohler, Ed. Uni-versitat Kiel, 1991, pp. 53-71. 

PlERREHUMBERT, J. B. The Phonology and Phonetics of English Intonation. PhD thesis, MIT, 1980. Published by Indiana University Linguistics Club. 

The history of the AM model is particularly interesting in that it has a dual character of being intended as a pure linguistic theory in the MIT, Chomsky/Halle phonology tradition and as a working model for the Bell Labs TTS system. It is important to realise that, from a theoretical linguistic point of view, the model as just described is not intended to be a complete model of intonation as used in human communication. 

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