The phonetics of suprasegmentals - Linguistics - University of ...

The phonetics of suprasegmentals 

Dr. Christian T. DiCanio 

cdicanio@gmail.com 

Laboratoire Dynamique du Langage 

Université Lumière Lyon 2 

http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/∼dicanio 

24/3/10 

DiCanio (DDL) Features 24/3/10 1 / 24

Suprasegmentals 

Segmental Independence 

Many phonetic targets in the speech signal have a short durational 

window, e.g. the tongue position for [s] in the word ‘descendre’ 

[desÃdK]. 

Certain phonetic targets have longer duration, which may overlap 

separate targets in shorter durational windows. Such properties are 

‘suprasegmental’ if: 

1 They have a sufficiently long duration which is able to span across two 

or more short duration windows corresponding to segments. 

Phonologically, they target units larger than single consonants/vowels. 

2 They function independently from contrastive phonetic targets which 

they span across. 


"stress" 


syllable syllable 

b ɪ z i 

duration 

pitch 

intensity 



What can be suprasegmental? 

Phonetic properties that are not used to contrast segments, e.g. pitch, 

duration, loudness (intensity), phonation type. 

Features which are secondary on segments. Many segments are 

voiced, so they have a pitch and some phonation type. All segments 

have duration and intensity by virtue of being sounds. 

How languages use these phonetic features depends on both the 

prosodic system (stress, accent, tone, register, intonation) and the 

language itself. 



Prosodic systems (Hyman, 2006) 

A tone language is one which pitch enters into the lexical 

representation of at least some morphemes. Pitch is used 

paradigmatically. 

A stress language is a language where pitch may be used 

syntagmatically. Stress languages have the following properties: 

1 Culminativity: every word has at most one syllable which is the most 

prominent. 

2 Obligatoriness: every word has at least one syllable which is more 

prominent than another. 

However, both types of languages may use pitch to contrast meaning 

on words. 



Trique (DiCanio, 2008) English 

jũ 4 earthquake 

jũ 3 palm leaf 

ũ 2 nine k h n " "t h Est contest (V) 

jũ 1 loose, light "k h ant h Est contest (N) 

kã 1 Pã 3 three õ@"k h Oõd record (V) 

kã 3 Pã 1 breath "õEkõ " d record (N) 

kã 3 Pã 32 I have gone p h õ@"dus produce (V) 

kã 2 Pã 2 I will go "p h õoURus produce (N) 


Stress 


In most stress languages, stressed syllables have higher pitch than 

unstressed syllables. The duration of the stressed syllable is often 

longer (as in English, Polish) and its loudness may also be greater. 

In English, French, Russian, and Estonian unstressed syllables have 

reduced vowels, or a reduced set of vowels, e.g. Russian [i, e, a, o, u] 

in stressed syllables but [i, u, @] in unstressed syllables. 

But... stress can be a tricky thing, especially in larger prosodic 

contexts (compounds, phrases, sentences). 



In context, stress is probably better defined as the syllable on a word 

where a intonational peak (accent) can occur. This is more of an 

abstract phonological definition than a phonetic one. 

ə ɹ ɪ dʒ ə n l i 

originally 


Pitch: Production 

Pitch 

Pitch is controlled by changes in the tension of the vocal folds, both 

longitudinally (along the folds) and medially (between the folds). 

The pitch of a sound corresponds to its fundamental frequency (F0), 

but the two are distinct. Pitch is often perceived as the difference in 

frequency between successive harmonics of the F0. 

The pitch range is humans varies. For men, it is usually between 

75-250 Hz. For women, it is usually between 120-350 Hz. 


Pitch 


Muscles controlling pitch 

Pitch 

The cricothyroid muscle is the main muscle responsible for pitch 

adjustments. It connects the cricoid cartilage to the thyroid cartilage. 

It elongates the vocal folds through a contraction which pulls the 

cricoid and thyroid cartilages together while the vocal folds are held in 

place at the posterior end of the cricoid cartilage. 


Pitch 

Pitch is also often controlled by vertical movements of the entire larynx, 

where the extrinsic laryngeal muscles pull the larynx up when raising pitch, 

but down when lowering pitch (Löfqvist et al., 1989; Stevens, 2000). 

Tongue-pull hypothesis (figure from Honda [2004] ISCA) 

the angle of the 

cricoid cartilage 

(relative to the thyroid 

cartilage) changes as 

the larynx moves up 

or down in the throat. 


Pitch 

Even though the production of pitch is largely independent from 

consonantal or vocalic gestures, certain segmental gestures may result in 

pitch changes. For instance, there is a relationship between pitch height 

and vowel height. 

“Intrinsic” pitch. 

On average high vowels have higher pitch than low vowels 

/i/ 183 

/e/ 169 

/æ/ 162 

/!/ 164 

/"/ 163 

/o/ 170 

/u/ 182 

Data from Lehiste & Peterson (1961) for American English 


Duration 

Duration 

Like pitch, duration is used as a suprasegmental property. In languages 

like English and Polish, it is used to mark stress. 

Duration can be used for segmental contrasts (singletons-geminates). 

Yet, even in languages with contrastive length, duration may be used 

to indicate stress. 

Other things, apart from stress, also influence vowel length, like word 

size or consonant voicing. 


Duration 

Long vowels in multisyllabic words 

Duration (in msec) of /!"/ in the sequence /t!"t/ in a set of Hungarian 

words (Tarnóczy, 1965): 

210 /t!"t/ 

180 /t!"to#/ 

140 /t!"to#$t/ 

120 /t!"to#$to"k/ 

110 /t!"to#$to"kn$k/ 

The more syllables in the word the shorter the initial “long” vowel. 


Duration 

There is contrastive vowel length in Levantine Arabic (Ham, 2001), but 

word size still has an effect on vowel length. 


Duration 

Thai vowel length contrast (Abramson, 1974; Roengpitya, 2002) 

pàk to stick in pààk mouth 

cìp to sip cììp to fold 

baN to hide baaN some 

òt to abstain òòt to lament 

k h âm dusk k h áàm to cross 

t h an on time t h aan alms 

Vowel length is neutralized in unstressed syllables in Thai. So, stress is not 

simply indicated by duration in the language, but by the presence of a 

durational contrast. 


Duration 

The effect of stress on vowel length in Thai (Gandour et al., 1996). 


Intrinsic Duration. 

Duration 

Vowel length is tied to vowel height (low vowels tend to be longer 

than high vowels). 

Intrinsic duration in Swedish (Elert, 1964): 

long short 

high /i y u/ 140 95 

mid /e ! "/ 155 103 

low /æ œ #/ 164 111 


Duration 

American English vowel duration (Hillenbrand et al., 1995) 

/i/ 282 ms /u/ 273 ms 

/I/ 226 ms /U/ 229 ms 

/eI/ 300 ms /oU/ 300 ms 

/E/ 226 ms /5/ 216 ms 

/æ/ 311 ms /O/ 318 ms 

/a/ 300 ms /ô/ 297 ms 

Lower vowels are longer than higher vowels. 

Lax vowels /I, E, U, 5/ are shorter than non-lax vowels, with a 

difference ratio of 1:1.33. 


Loudness 

Loudness 

Stress differences in languages also sometimes correlate with 

differences in loudness, but this is uncommon. In English, stressed 

syllables are often no louder than unstressed sylables (Ladefoged, 

1971). 

Loudness often does vary with respect to vowel quality or pitch level. 


Loudness 

Intrinsic Loudness - low vowels are louder. 

English: VU (volume unit) meter readings 

(Lehiste & Peterson, 1959) 

/i/ 80.1 /i/ -9.7 

/e/ 81.1 /e/ -3.6 

/a/ 85.7 /a/ 0 

/o/ 83.5 /o/ -7.2 

/u/ 80.4 /u/ -12.3 

Hungarian: dB relative to /a/ 

Fónagy, 1966 


Loudness 

Intensity profile of 5 different tones in Trique 

Intensity (dB.) 

65 70 75 80 85 

3 

3 

3 

2 

1 

3 3 3 3 3 3 

2 

1 

2 

3 

23 2 

1 

23 2 2 

3 

1 

1 

1 

3 

1 

3 

1 

1 1 

2 4 6 8 10 

Time (normalized) 

DiCanio (DDL) Features 24/3/10 23 / 24 

3 

2 

1 

1 

3

Summary 

Loudness 

Pitch is used in words with contrastive tone or stress. 

Duration is used in words with contrastive stress or tone but is also 

manipulated for use voicing, word size, and vowel quality. 

Loudness is used in words with contrastive stress and may also be 

used to distinguish tones, but it is never as much of a major acoustic 

correlate of a phonological contrast as pitch or duration are. It is also 

used to distinguish vowel quality. 


Loudness 

Abramson, A. S., 1974. Experimental phonetics in phonology: Vowel duration in Thai. 

Pasaa 4, 71–90. 

DiCanio, C. T., 2008. The Phonetics and Phonology of San Martín Itunyoso Trique. 

Ph.D. thesis, University of California, Berkeley. 

Gandour, J. T., Potisuk, S., Harper, M. P., 1996. Effects of stress on vowel length in 

Thai. In: The Fourth International Symposium on Language and Linguistics. Institute 

of Language and Culture for Rural Development, Mahidol University, pp. 95–103. 

Ham, W. H., 2001. Phonetic and Phonological Aspects of Geminate Timing. 

Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics. Routledge. 

Hillenbrand, J., Getty, L. A., Clark, M. J., Wheeler, K., 1995. Acoustic characteristics of 

American English vowels. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 97 (5), 

3099–3111. 

Hyman, L. M., 2006. Word-prosodic typology. Phonology 23, 225–257. 

Ladefoged, P., 1971. Preliminaries to Linguistic Phonetics. Chicago, University of 

Chicago. 

Löfqvist, A., Baer, T., McGarr, N. S., Seider Story, R., 1989. The cricothyroid muscle in 

voicing control. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 85, 1314–1321. 

Roengpitya, R., 2002. A historical and perceptual study of vowel length in Thai. In: 

Macken, M. A. (Ed.), Papers from the 10 th Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian 

Lingusitics Society. Arizona State University, Program for Southeast Asian Studies, 

pp. 353–366. 

Stevens, K. N., 2000. Acoustic Phonetics, 1st Edition. MIT Press.

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