| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
KUMAGAI Tomoko Center for Teach. Jap.as a Second Lang. Senior researcher, 日本語教育センター, 主任研究官 (40207816)
YOSHIOKA Yasuo Dept. Language Change, Dept. Head, 言語変化研究部, 部長 (90200948)
AIZAWA Masao Dept. Language System, Dept. Head, 言語体系研究部, 部長 (80167767)
KIRITANI Shigeru Kobe Kaisei Women's Col., Facult. Letters, Professor, 教授 (90010032)
KAKEHI Kazuhiko Nagoya Univ. Grad School. Human Info., Professor, 大学院 人間情報学研究科, 教授 (90262930)
KASUYA Hideki Utsunomiya Univ., Facult. Engineering Professor, 工学部, 教授 (20006240)
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| Research Abstract |
The main objective of this study consisted in the clarification of the phonetic mechanism by which paralinguistic information is conveyed in speech. Development of the description framework of paralinguistic meaning was the secondary objective.
An acoustic analysis of prosodic and segmental features was conducted using laboratory speech that aimed at six different paralinguistic meanings, viz., 'neutral', 'focused', 'suspicion', 'admiration', 'disappointment', and 'Indifference.'Systematic changes due to the specification of paralinguistic meaning were found in duration, pitch contour, quality of segmental phones, and phonation types. The changes in duration and pitch were especially prominent at the both edges of an utterance, i. e. at the beginning and end.
A fiber-optic high-speed video imaging of the vocal folds vibration was conducted in order to clarify the difference of phonation type. Pressed phonation and breathy phonation were found in 'suspicion' and 'disappointment' rendition
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s respectively. The acoustic consequence of the phonation difference was estimated using the ARX method.
An EMMA measurement of articulatory gestures revealed systematic difference of horizontal tongue position between 'suspicion'and 'admiration'the former and the latter being articulate in more front and back positions respectively. This difference, observed both in vowels and consonants, suggests strongly that the articulatory difference was the manipulation of voice-quality rather than that of individual segments.
Lastly, we conducted the following analyses in order to clarify the semantic structure of paralinguistic meaning : 1)Classification of the texts denoting the tone-of-voice in novel, 2)Perception experiment of the speech material used in the acoustic analysis and the MDS analysis of the perception space, 3)Compilation of the description-word set for the description of individual voice-quality, and 4)Observation of pre-school children's perception and description of emotional speech. Unfortunately, however, we were unable to construct a unifying description framework of paralinguistic semantics based on these individual studies. Less
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