Studies of intonation in communicative phonetics

1. Experimental studies of the speaker’s characteristics on phonetic level, i.e. the role of phonetic means in the process of speaker recognition. The description of phonetic level of speaker recognition is based on the studies carried out by J.Wells (1982), D.Abercrombie (1967), the review of Nolan’s work made by Ladefoged (1982). According to Nolan non-intentional differences between speakers lie both on segmental and suprasegmental levels, namely:

a) differences in the number of phonemic oppositions, i.e. differences in the system of phonemes;

b) differences in the permitted sequences of phonemes in a language, i.e. in phonotactics;

c) incidental differences, like /aID@/ and /i:D@/; /Qfn/ and /Qftn/; /lIsn/ and /lIst@n/;

d) realizational differences mentioned by D.Abercrombie, which show the speaker’s sociolinguistic background, dialect, vocal size and shape. These differences are termed as ‘across-speaker’ variabilities. Differences caused by the speaker’s physiological and psychological state, speaking rate, voice quality are called ‘ within-speaker ’ variabilities. To this group of differences belong the so-called coarticulational differences.

The suprasegmental differences can be described in the terms of the same four factors mentioned above. To the individual variations on the speaker’s suprasegmental level L.S.Hultzen 1957) ascribes the speakers’ peculiar nuclear tones (the use of falling tones in non-final intonation groups stands for a speaker’s dogmatic character; other speakers use rising tones everywhere producing the impression of being generally tentative or querulous.), a wider or narrower range, different pronunciation of unstressed syllables. These individual variations communicate the information about the personality of the speaker as well as are the part of the complex which help to recognize voices.

Besides the speakers can differ from one another in communicative intent as well as in non-intentional ways.

Revealing the nature of some information in speech signal, which is speech-specific knowledge, can be helpful in the development of speech recognition system.

2. Prosodic manifestation of the speakers’ social background, status and roles, sex and age, physical and psychological states etc.

3. Phonetic characteristics of male and female speech.

4. Phonetic means in expressing the utterance emotional and pragmatic potential.

5. Phonetic means in expressing cognitive meaning.

6. The interaction of prosodic and paralinguistic means in expressing the utterance meaning.

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