Modelling Intonation in Varieties of Swedish

2008

SWING (SWedish INtonation Generator) is a new tool for analysis and modelling of Swedish in- tonation by resynthesis. It was developed in or- der to facilitate analysis of regional varieties, particularly related to the Swedish prosody model. Annotated speech samples are resynthe- sized with rule based intonation and audio- visually analysed with regard to the major in- tonational varieties of Swedish. We find the tool useful in our work with testing and further de- veloping the Swedish prosody model.

1996

In this paper we discuss some recent extensions of the prosody model used in the research project 'Prosodic Segmentation and Structuring of Dialogue'. In our current modelling of dialogue intonation we are using both model-based resynthesis and text-to-speech. The idea is to be able to regulate the influence of discourse and dialogue structure on prosody and intonation. In the present contribution we report on some aspects of overall FO trends in dialogues and its implications for the model. We also report on our work to incorporate dialoguerelated rules in our text-to-speech system.

2008

Our recent work within the research project SIMULEKT (Simulating Intonational Varieties of Swedish) includes two approaches. The first involves a pilot perception test, used for detecting tendencies in human clustering of Swedish dialects. 30 Swedish listeners were asked to identify the geographical origin of Swedish native speakers by clicking on a map of Sweden. Results indicate for example that listeners from the south of Sweden are better at recognizing some major Swedish dialects than listeners from the central part of Sweden, which includes the capital area. The second approach concerns a method for modelling intonation using the newly developed SWING (SWedish INtonation Generator) tool, where annotated speech samples are resynthesized with rule based intonation and audiovisually analysed with regards to the major intonational varieties of Swedish. We consider both approaches important in our aim to test and further develop the Swedish prosody model.

2008

Our recent work within the research project SIMULEKT (Simulating Intonational Varieties of Swedish) includes two approaches. The first involves a pilot perception test, used for detecting tendencies in human clustering of Swedish dialects. 30 Swedish listeners were asked to identify the geographical origin of Swedish native speakers by clicking on a map of Sweden. Results indicate for example that listeners from the south of Sweden are better at recognizing some major Swedish dialects than listeners from the central part of Sweden, which includes the capital area. The second approach concerns a method for modelling intonation using the newly developed SWING (SWedish INtonationGenerator) tool, where annotated speech samples are resynthesized with rule based intonation and audiovisually analysed with regards to the major intonational varieties of Swedish. We consider both approaches important in our aim to test and further develop the Swedish prosody model.

Proceeding of Fourth International Conference on Spoken Language Processing. ICSLP '96

The main goal of our current research is the development of the Swedish prosody model. In our analysis of discourse and dialogue intonation we are exploiting model-based resynthesis. By comparing synthesized default and fine-tuned pitch contours for dialogues under study we are able to isolate relevant intonation patterns. This analysis of intonation is related to an independent modelling of topic structure consisting of lexical-semantic analysis and text segmentation. Some results from our model-based acoustic analysis are presented, and the implementation in text-tospeech-synthesis is discussed.

Proceedings from Fonetik 2006 (Lund University Working Papers in General Linguistics and Phonetics 52.), 2006

Standard Finland Swedish is often described as having Finnish-like intonation, with characteristic falling pitch accents. In this study, it is found that the falling pitch accent occurs with varying degrees of frequency in different Finland Swedish dialects, being most frequent in the dialects that have had the greatest amount of contact with Finnish, and less frequent (though in many cases still part of the intonational system) elsewhere.

Swedish (~9,000,000 speakers) is one of five Scandinavian languages, along with Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic, and Faroese, all descended from a common language that existed up until roughly 800 years ago. Norwegian and Swedish in particular retain mutual intelligibility, and are famous for two things: firstly, their large vowel inventories, which appears to have as many as eighteen contrasting vowel qualities, and their pitch accent system, highly anomalous for Germanic languages. The present paper will focus on the pitch-accent system of Swedish, though in proving that this is indeed a pitch-accent system and not a matter of tonality as some researchers have suggested, will be considering syllable structure and its link to vowel quality as well. The pitch-accent system has been studied for decades, predominantly by Swedish and Norwegian phonologists; this paper will be looking at theories indicating that the pitch-accent system of Swedish is at least partly redundant due to its predictability via the phonology and morphology of a word, lend support to a specific analysis of the system and its predictability, and provide new data suggesting that this predictability is indeed productive in speech, able to be generalized to novel words.

The topic of this paper is the variability of phrase-initial pitch patterns of South Swedish. Central Swedish pitch patterns for phrase-initial accent I both to the East (Stockholm) and to the West (Gothenburg) display an apparent constancy, albeit with distinct patterns: East Central Swedish rising and West Central Swedish fall-rise. In South Swedish, the corresponding pitch patterns can be described as more variable. The falling default accentual pitch pattern in the South is dominating in the major-ity of the sub-varieties examined, even if a rising pattern and a fall-rise are not uncommon here. There seems to be a dif-ference in geographical distribution, so that towards northeast within the South Swedish region the percentage of a rising pat-tern has increased, while there is a corresponding tendency for the fall-rise to be a more a frequent pattern towards northwest. The occurrence of the rising pattern of initial accent I in South Swedish could be seen as an influence from an...

The Department of English in Lund Working Papers in Linguistics, 2003

Kan du minnas tillbaka på när du var barn? Can you remember back on when you where a child? (Blending of the expressions remember and think back on).