The rise/fall/connection model of intonation.

Abstract

This paper describes a new model of intonation for English. The paper proposes that intonation can be described using a sequence of rise, fall and connection elements. Pitch accents and boundary rises are described using rise and fall elements, and connection elements are used to describe everything else. Equations can be used to synthesize fundamental frequency (F ) contours from these elements. An automatic labelling system is described which can derive a rise/fall/connection description from any utterance without using prior knowledge or top-down processing. Synthesis and analysis experiments are described using utterances from six speakers of various English accents. An analysis/resynthesis experiment is described which shows that the contours produced by the model are similar to within 3.6 to 7.3 Hz of the originals. An assessment of the automatic labeller shows 72% to 92% agreement between automatic and hand labels. The paper concludes with a comparison between this model and others, and a discussion of the practical applications of the model.