This study investigates F0 declination as a global-level prosodic phenomenon, establishing a new discourse-based model of prosodic structure in Japanese. The model includes two levels of declination in a hierarchical order: utterance units and prosodic paragraphs, a higher level of declination consisting of embedded declinations. Comparing and contrasting three types of discourse -read speech, ...

The angular declination of a target with respect to eye level is known to be an important cue to egocentric distance when objects are viewed or can be assumed to be resting on the ground. When targets are fixated, angular declination and the direction of the gaze with respect to eye level have the same objective value. However, any situation that limits the time available to shift gaze could le...

This study investigates F0 declination in broadcast news speech in English and Mandarin Chinese. The results demonstrate a strong relationship between utterance length and declination slope. Shorter utterances have steeper declination even after excluding the initial rising and final lowering effects. Both topline and baseline show declination, but they are independent. The topline and baseline...

This paper deals with F0 declination in Russian. The study was conducted using statistical data derived from the Corpus of Professionally Read Speech. The results confirm the relationship between F0 slope and the utterance length for Russian. At the same time they reveal a) individual strategies in preplanning declination slope of the phrase or utterance; b) strong dependency of the F0 slope on...

A series of experiments was carried out to investigate how fundamental frequency declination is perceived by speakers of English. Using linear predictor coded speech, nonsense sentences were constructed in which fundamental frequency on the last stressed syllable had been systematically varied. Listeners were asked to judge which stressed syllable was higher in pitch. Their judgments were found...

The physiological background of sentence declination (fundamental frequency, F0, drop) was studied using ultrasound (US) examination of the cricothyroid (CT) space. The US probe was placed anteriorly in the region of middle cricothyroid ligament. The echoes caused by the antero-inferior edge of thyroid and antero-superior edge of the cricoid cartilages were used as points of measurement. The te...

This paper deals with a prosodic comparison of spontaneous and read-aloud speech. More speci cally, the study reports data on F0 declination in these two speaking modes using Swedish materials. For both speaking styles the analysis revealed negative slopes, a steepness-duration dependency with declination being less steep in longer utterances than in shorter ones and resetting at utterance boun...

The modeling of the melody in a Text-To-Speech System is indispensable to have a good quality of synthesis and to approach the naturalness. The study of the melody generally includes the analysis of the local melody events relating to the accent and the declination of the global melody contour of an utterance. In this paper, we will present an experimental study of the declination phenomenon co...