Similar Prosodic Structure Perceived Differently in German and English | Zendy

Heather Kember | Zendy; Ann-Kathrin Grohe | Zendy; Katharina Zahner | Zendy; Bettina Braun | Zendy; Andréa Weber | Zendy; Anne Cutler | Zendy

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Similar Prosodic Structure Perceived Differently in German and English

Author(s) -

Heather Kember,

Ann-Kathrin Grohe,

Katharina Zahner,

Bettina Braun,

Andréa Weber,

Anne Cutler

Publication year - 2017

Publication title -

interspeech 2022

Language(s) - English

Resource type - Conference proceedings

DOI - 10.21437/interspeech.2017-544

Subject(s) - german , abx test , prosody , duration (music) , perception , psychology , phrase , linguistics , task (project management) , speech recognition , computer science , audiology , acoustics , artificial intelligence , mathematics , engineering , physics , statistics , philosophy , medicine , systems engineering , neuroscience

English and German have similar prosody, but their speakers realize some pitch falls (not rises) in subtly different ways. We here test for asymmetry in perception. An ABX discrimination task requiring F0 slope or duration judgements on isolated vowels revealed no cross-language difference in duration or F0 fall discrimination, but discrimination of rises (realized similarly in each language) was less accurate for English than for German listeners. This unexpected finding may reflect greater sensitivity to rising patterns by German listeners, or reduced sensitivity by English listeners as a result of extensive exposure to phrase-final rises ("uptalk") in their language.

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