Publications

Contextual predictability variation affects phonological and phonetic structure. Reduction and expansion of acoustic-phonetic features is also characteristic of prosodic variability. In this study, we assess the impact of surprisal and prosodic structure on phonetic encoding, both independently of each other and in interaction. We model segmental duration, vowel space size and spectral characteristics of vowels and consonants as a function of surprisal as well as of syllable prominence, phrase boundary, and speech rate. Correlates of phonetic encoding density are extracted from a subset of the BonnTempo corpus for six languages: American English, Czech, Finnish, French, German, and Polish. Surprisal is estimated from segmental n-gram language models trained on large text corpora. Our findings are generally compatible with a weak version of Aylett and Turk’s Smooth Signal Redundancy hypothesis, suggesting that prosodic structure mediates between the requirements of efficient communication and the speech signal. However, this mediation is not perfect, as we found evidence for additional, direct effects of changes in surprisal on the phonetic structure of utterances. These effects appear to be stable across different speech rates.

• https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2018.00025/full
• https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2018.00025

@article{Malisz2018,
title = {Dimensions of segmental variability: interaction of prosody and surprisal in six languages},
author = {Zofia Malisz and Erika Brandt and Bernd M{\"o}bius and Yoon Mi Oh and Bistra Andreeva},
url = {https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2018.00025/full},
doi = {https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2018.00025},
year = {2018},
date = {2018-07-20},
journal = {Frontiers in Communication / Language Sciences},
pages = {1-18},
volume = {3},
number = {25},
abstract = {Contextual predictability variation affects phonological and phonetic structure. Reduction and expansion of acoustic-phonetic features is also characteristic of prosodic variability. In this study, we assess the impact of surprisal and prosodic structure on phonetic encoding, both independently of each other and in interaction. We model segmental duration, vowel space size and spectral characteristics of vowels and consonants as a function of surprisal as well as of syllable prominence, phrase boundary, and speech rate. Correlates of phonetic encoding density are extracted from a subset of the BonnTempo corpus for six languages: American English, Czech, Finnish, French, German, and Polish. Surprisal is estimated from segmental n-gram language models trained on large text corpora. Our findings are generally compatible with a weak version of Aylett and Turk's Smooth Signal Redundancy hypothesis, suggesting that prosodic structure mediates between the requirements of efficient communication and the speech signal. However, this mediation is not perfect, as we found evidence for additional, direct effects of changes in surprisal on the phonetic structure of utterances. These effects appear to be stable across different speech rates.},
pubstate = {published},
type = {article}
}

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Collocations have been identified as an interesting field to study the effects of frequency of occurrence in language and speech. We report results of a production experiment including a duration analysis based on the production of German collocations. The collocations occurred in a condition where the phrase was produced with a literal meaning and in another condition where it was idiomatic. A durational difference was found for the collocations, which were reduced in the idiomatic condition. This difference was also observed for the function word und (‘and’) in collocations like Mord und Totschlag (‘murder and manslaughter’). However, an analysis of the vowel /U/ of the function word did not show a durational difference. Some explanations as to why speakers showed different patterns of reduction (not all collocations were produced with a shorter duration in the idiomatic condition by all speakers) and why not all speakers use the durational cue (one out of eight speakers produced the conditions identically) are proposed.

• zimmerer_etal_sp2018-1     (0.21MB)
• https://www.isca-speech.org/archive/speechprosody_2018/zimmerer18_speechprosody.html
• https://doi.org/10.21437/SpeechProsody.2018-87

@inproceedings{Zimmerer2018SpPro,
title = {Idiomatic or literal? Production of collocations in German read speech},
author = {Frank Zimmerer and Erika Brandt and Bistra Andreeva and Bernd M{\"o}bius},
url = {https://www.isca-speech.org/archive/speechprosody_2018/zimmerer18_speechprosody.html},
doi = {https://doi.org/10.21437/SpeechProsody.2018-87},
year = {2018},
date = {2018},
booktitle = {Proc. Speech Prosody 2018},
pages = {428-432},
address = {Poznan},
abstract = {Collocations have been identified as an interesting field to study the effects of frequency of occurrence in language and speech. We report results of a production experiment including a duration analysis based on the production of German collocations. The collocations occurred in a condition where the phrase was produced with a literal meaning and in another condition where it was idiomatic. A durational difference was found for the collocations, which were reduced in the idiomatic condition. This difference was also observed for the function word und (‘and’) in collocations like Mord und Totschlag (‘murder and manslaughter’). However, an analysis of the vowel /U/ of the function word did not show a durational difference. Some explanations as to why speakers showed different patterns of reduction (not all collocations were produced with a shorter duration in the idiomatic condition by all speakers) and why not all speakers use the durational cue (one out of eight speakers produced the conditions identically) are proposed.},
pubstate = {published},
type = {inproceedings}
}

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This study investigated the influence of prosodic structure and information density (ID), defined as contextual predictability, on vowel-inherent spectral change (VISC). We extracted formant measurements from the onset and offset of the vowels of a large German corpus of newspaper read speech. Vector length (VL), the Euclidean distance between F1 and F2 trajectory, and F1 and F2 slope, formant deltas of onset and offset relative to vowel duration, were calculated as measures of formant change. ID factors were word frequency and phoneme-based surprisal measures, while the prosodic factors contained global and local articulation rate, primary lexical stress, and prosodic boundary. We expected that vowels increased in spectral change when they were difficult to predict from the context, or stood in low-frequency words while controlling for known effects of prosodic structure. The ID effects were assumed to be modulated by prosodic factors to a certain extent. We confirmed our hypotheses for VL, and found expected independent effects of prosody and ID on F1 slope and F2 slope.

• brandt_etal_sp2018     (0.31MB)
• https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325744530_Impact_of_prosodic_structure_and_information_density_on_dynamic_formant_trajectories_in_German
• https://doi.org/10.22028/D291-32050

@inproceedings{Brandt2018SpPro,
title = {Impact of prosodic structure and information density on dynamic formant trajectories in German},
author = {Erika Brandt and Frank Zimmerer and Bistra Andreeva and Bernd M{\"o}bius},
editor = {Katarzyna Klessa and Jolanta Bachan and Agnieszka Wagner and Maciej Karpiński and Daniel Śledziński},
url = {https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325744530_Impact_of_prosodic_structure_and_information_density_on_dynamic_formant_trajectories_in_German},
doi = {https://doi.org/10.22028/D291-32050},
year = {2018},
date = {2018},
booktitle = {Speech Prosody 2018},
issn = {2333-2042},
pages = {119-123},
publisher = {Speech Prosody Special Interest Group},
address = {Urbana},
abstract = {This study investigated the influence of prosodic structure and information density (ID), defined as contextual predictability, on vowel-inherent spectral change (VISC). We extracted formant measurements from the onset and offset of the vowels of a large German corpus of newspaper read speech. Vector length (VL), the Euclidean distance between F1 and F2 trajectory, and F1 and F2 slope, formant deltas of onset and offset relative to vowel duration, were calculated as measures of formant change. ID factors were word frequency and phoneme-based surprisal measures, while the prosodic factors contained global and local articulation rate, primary lexical stress, and prosodic boundary. We expected that vowels increased in spectral change when they were difficult to predict from the context, or stood in low-frequency words while controlling for known effects of prosodic structure. The ID effects were assumed to be modulated by prosodic factors to a certain extent. We confirmed our hypotheses for VL, and found expected independent effects of prosody and ID on F1 slope and F2 slope.},
pubstate = {published},
type = {inproceedings}
}

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This study investigated whether German vowels differ significantly from each other in mel-cepstral distortion (MCD) when they stand in different information density (ID) contexts. We hypothesized that vowels in the same ID contexts are more similar to each other than vowels that stand in different ID conditions. Read speech material from PhonDat2 of 16 German natives (m = 10, f = 6) was analyzed. Bi-phone and word language models were calculated based on DeWaC. To account for additional variability in the data, prosodic factors, as well as corpusspecific frequency values were also entered into the statistical models. Results showed that vowels in different ID conditions were significantly different in their MCD values. Unigram word probability and corpus-specific word frequency showed the expected effect on vowel similarity with a hierarchy between noncontrasting and contrasting conditions. However, these did not form a homogeneous group since there were group-internal significant differences. The largest distance can be found between vowels produced at fast speech rate, and between unstressed vowels.

• brandt_etal_is2017-1-1     (0.2MB)
• https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319185343_Mel-Cepstral_Distortion_of_German_Vowels_in_Different_Information_Density_Contexts

@inproceedings{Brandt/etal:2017,
title = {Mel-cepstral distortion of German vowels in different information density contexts},
author = {Erika Brandt and Frank Zimmerer and Bernd M{\"o}bius and Bistra Andreeva},
url = {https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319185343_Mel-Cepstral_Distortion_of_German_Vowels_in_Different_Information_Density_Contexts},
year = {2017},
date = {2017},
booktitle = {Proceedings of Interspeech},
address = {Stockholm, Sweden},
abstract = {This study investigated whether German vowels differ significantly from each other in mel-cepstral distortion (MCD) when they stand in different information density (ID) contexts. We hypothesized that vowels in the same ID contexts are more similar to each other than vowels that stand in different ID conditions. Read speech material from PhonDat2 of 16 German natives (m = 10, f = 6) was analyzed. Bi-phone and word language models were calculated based on DeWaC. To account for additional variability in the data, prosodic factors, as well as corpusspecific frequency values were also entered into the statistical models. Results showed that vowels in different ID conditions were significantly different in their MCD values. Unigram word probability and corpus-specific word frequency showed the expected effect on vowel similarity with a hierarchy between noncontrasting and contrasting conditions. However, these did not form a homogeneous group since there were group-internal significant differences. The largest distance can be found between vowels produced at fast speech rate, and between unstressed vowels.},
pubstate = {published},
type = {inproceedings}
}

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In zwei Perzeptionsexperimenten wurde die Perzeption von Sprechgeschwindigkeit untersucht. Ein Faktor, der dabei besonders im Zentrum des Interesses steht, ist Surprisal, ein informationstheoretisches Maß für die Vorhersagbarkeit einer linguistischen Einheit im Kontext. Zusammengenommen legen die Ergebnisse der Experimente den Schluss nahe, dass Surprisal keinen signifikanten Einfluss auf die Wahrnehmung von Sprechgeschwindigkeit ausübt.

• zimmerer_etal_essv2017     (0.29MB)
• https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318589916_PERZEPTION_VON_SPRECHGESCHWINDIGKEIT_UND_DER_NICHT_NACHGEWIESENE_EINFLUSS_VON_SURPRISAL

@inproceedings{Zimmerer/etal:2017a,
title = {Perzeption von Sprechgeschwindigkeit und der (nicht nachgewiesene) Einfluss von Surprisal},
author = {Frank Zimmerer and Bistra Andreeva and Bernd M{\"o}bius and Zofia Malisz and Emmanuel Ferragne and François Pellegrino and Erika Brandt},
editor = {Bernd M{\"o}bius},
url = {https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318589916_PERZEPTION_VON_SPRECHGESCHWINDIGKEIT_UND_DER_NICHT_NACHGEWIESENE_EINFLUSS_VON_SURPRISAL},
year = {2017},
date = {2017-03-15},
booktitle = {Elektronische Sprachsignalverarbeitung 2017 - Tagungsband der 28. Konferenz, Saarbr{\"u}cken, 15.-17. M{\"a}rz 2017. Studientexte zur Sprachkommunikation, Band 86},
pages = {174-179},
abstract = {In zwei Perzeptionsexperimenten wurde die Perzeption von Sprechgeschwindigkeit untersucht. Ein Faktor, der dabei besonders im Zentrum des Interesses steht, ist Surprisal, ein informationstheoretisches Ma{\ss} f{\"u}r die Vorhersagbarkeit einer linguistischen Einheit im Kontext. Zusammengenommen legen die Ergebnisse der Experimente den Schluss nahe, dass Surprisal keinen signifikanten Einfluss auf die Wahrnehmung von Sprechgeschwindigkeit aus{\"u}bt.},
pubstate = {published},
type = {inproceedings}
}

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• https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1159/000450829/html
• https://doi.org/10.1159/000450829

@article{Malisz/etal:2016,
title = {Perspectives on speech timing: Coupled oscillator modeling of Polish and Finnish},
author = {Zofia Malisz and Michael O'Dell and Tommi Nieminen and Petra Wagner},
url = {https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1159/000450829/html},
doi = {https://doi.org/10.1159/000450829},
year = {2016},
date = {2016},
journal = {Phonetica},
pages = {229-255},
volume = {73},
abstract = {

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We investigated the influence of prosodic structure and information density on vowel space size. Vowels were measured in five languages from the BonnTempo corpus, French, German, Finnish, Czech, and Polish, each with three female and three male speakers. Speakers read the text at normal, slow, and fast speech rate. The Euclidean distance between vowel space midpoint and formant values for each speaker was used as a measure for vowel distinctiveness. The prosodic model consisted of prominence and boundary. Information density was calculated for each language using the surprisal of the biphone Xn|Xn−1. On average, there is a positive relationship between vowel space expansion and information density. Detailed analysis revealed that this relationship did not hold for Finnish, and was only weak for Polish. When vowel distinctiveness was modeled as a function of prosodic factors and information density in linear mixed effects models (LMM), only prosodic factors were significant in explaining the variance in vowel space expansion. All prosodic factors, except word boundary, showed significant positive results in LMM. Vowels were more distinct in stressed syllables, before a prosodic boundary and at normal and slow speech rate compared to fast speech.

• schulz_etal_sp2016-1     (0.43MB)
• https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303755409_Impact_of_prosodic_structure_and_information_density_on_vowel_space_size

@inproceedings{Schulz/etal:2016a,
title = {Impact of Prosodic Structure and Information Density on Vowel Space Size},
author = {Erika Schulz and Yoon Mi Oh and Bistra Andreeva and Bernd M{\"o}bius},
url = {https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303755409_Impact_of_prosodic_structure_and_information_density_on_vowel_space_size},
year = {2016},
date = {2016},
booktitle = {Proceedings of Speech Prosody},
pages = {350-354},
address = {Boston, MA, USA},
abstract = {We investigated the influence of prosodic structure and information density on vowel space size. Vowels were measured in five languages from the BonnTempo corpus, French, German, Finnish, Czech, and Polish, each with three female and three male speakers. Speakers read the text at normal, slow, and fast speech rate. The Euclidean distance between vowel space midpoint and formant values for each speaker was used as a measure for vowel distinctiveness. The prosodic model consisted of prominence and boundary. Information density was calculated for each language using the surprisal of the biphone Xn|Xn−1. On average, there is a positive relationship between vowel space expansion and information density. Detailed analysis revealed that this relationship did not hold for Finnish, and was only weak for Polish. When vowel distinctiveness was modeled as a function of prosodic factors and information density in linear mixed effects models (LMM), only prosodic factors were significant in explaining the variance in vowel space expansion. All prosodic factors, except word boundary, showed significant positive results in LMM. Vowels were more distinct in stressed syllables, before a prosodic boundary and at normal and slow speech rate compared to fast speech.},
pubstate = {published},
type = {inproceedings}
}

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• https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305684951_Toward_the_use_of_information_density_based_descriptive_features_in_HMM_based_speech_synthesis

@inproceedings{LeMaguer2016SP,
title = {Toward the use of information density based descriptive features in HMM based speech synthesis},
author = {S{\'e}bastien Le Maguer and Bernd M{\"o}bius and Ingmar Steiner},
url = {https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305684951_Toward_the_use_of_information_density_based_descriptive_features_in_HMM_based_speech_synthesis},
year = {2016},
date = {2016},
booktitle = {8th International Conference on Speech Prosody},
pages = {1029-1033},
address = {Boston, MA, USA},
abstract = {

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Durant les dernières décennies, la modélisation acoustique effectuée par les systèmes de synthèse de parole paramétrique a fait l’objet d’une attention particulière. Toutefois, dans la plupart des systèmes connus, l’ensemble des descripteurs linguistiques utilisés pour représenter le texte reste identique. Plus specifiquement, la modélisation de la prosodie reste guidée par des descripteurs de bas niveau comme l’information d’accentuation de la syllabe ou bien l’étiquette grammaticale du mot. Dans cet article, nous proposons d’intégrer des informations basées sur la prédictibilité d’un évènement (la syllabe ou le mot). Plusieurs études indiquent une corrélation forte entre cette mesure, fortement présente dans la linguistique computationnelle, et certaines spécificités lors de la production humaine de la parole. Notre hypothèse est donc que l’ajout de ces descripteurs améliore la modélisation de la prosodie. Cet article se focalise sur une analyse objective de l’apport de ces descripteurs sur la synthèse HMM pour la langue anglaise et française.

• JEP_2016_paper_17     (2.16MB)
• https://aclanthology.org/2016.jeptalnrecital-jep.80

@inproceedings{Lemaguer/etal:2016b,
title = {De l'utilisation de descripteurs issus de la linguistique computationnelle dans le cadre de la synthèse par HMM},
author = {S{\'e}bastien Le Maguer and Bernd M{\"o}bius and Ingmar Steiner and Damien Lolive},
url = {https://aclanthology.org/2016.jeptalnrecital-jep.80},
year = {2016},
date = {2016},
booktitle = {Actes de la conf{\'e}rence conjointe JEP-TALN-RECITAL 2016. volume 1 : JEP},
pages = {714-722},
publisher = {AFCP - ATALA},
address = {Paris, France},
abstract = {Durant les dernières d{\'e}cennies, la mod{\'e}lisation acoustique effectu{\'e}e par les systèmes de synthèse de parole param{\'e}trique a fait l’objet d’une attention particulière. Toutefois, dans la plupart des systèmes connus, l’ensemble des descripteurs linguistiques utilis{\'e}s pour repr{\'e}senter le texte reste identique. Plus specifiquement, la mod{\'e}lisation de la prosodie reste guid{\'e}e par des descripteurs de bas niveau comme l’information d’accentuation de la syllabe ou bien l’{\'e}tiquette grammaticale du mot. Dans cet article, nous proposons d’int{\'e}grer des informations bas{\'e}es sur la pr{\'e}dictibilit{\'e} d’un {\'e}vènement (la syllabe ou le mot). Plusieurs {\'e}tudes indiquent une corr{\'e}lation forte entre cette mesure, fortement pr{\'e}sente dans la linguistique computationnelle, et certaines sp{\'e}cificit{\'e}s lors de la production humaine de la parole. Notre hypothèse est donc que l’ajout de ces descripteurs am{\'e}liore la mod{\'e}lisation de la prosodie. Cet article se focalise sur une analyse objective de l’apport de ces descripteurs sur la synthèse HMM pour la langue anglaise et française.

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Vokalraumausdehnung wird von mehreren Faktoren bestimmt, z. B. von Geschlecht (Simpson und Ericsdotter 2007), Sprechstil (Bradlow, Kraus und Hayes 2003), Prosodie (Bergem 1993), Sprechgeschwindigkeit (Weirich und Simpson 2014) oder phonologischer Nachbarschaftsdichte (Munson und Solomon 2004). Auch Sprachredundanz kann als Prädiktor spektraler Ausprägung von Vokalen dienen (Aylett und Turk 2006). Diese Studie untersucht den Einfluss von Informationsdichte und prosodischen Strukturen auf Vokalraumausdehnung in Französisch, Deutsch, Amerikanischem Englisch und Finnisch.

• https://www.online.uni-marburg.de/pundp11/talks/Schulz_etal.pdf

@inproceedings{pundp11,
title = {Einfluss von Informationsdichte und prosodischer Struktur auf Vokalraumausdehnung},
author = {Erika Schulz and Zofia Malisz and Bistra Andreeva and Bernd M{\"o}bius},
url = {https://www.online.uni-marburg.de/pundp11/talks/Schulz_etal.pdf},
year = {2015},
date = {2015},
booktitle = {Phonetik und Phonologie 11},
address = {Marburg},
abstract = {Vokalraumausdehnung wird von mehreren Faktoren bestimmt, z. B. von Geschlecht (Simpson und Ericsdotter 2007), Sprechstil (Bradlow, Kraus und Hayes 2003), Prosodie (Bergem 1993), Sprechgeschwindigkeit (Weirich und Simpson 2014) oder phonologischer Nachbarschaftsdichte (Munson und Solomon 2004). Auch Sprachredundanz kann als Pr{\"a}diktor spektraler Auspr{\"a}gung von Vokalen dienen (Aylett und Turk 2006). Diese Studie untersucht den Einfluss von Informationsdichte und prosodischen Strukturen auf Vokalraumausdehnung in Franz{\"o}sisch, Deutsch, Amerikanischem Englisch und Finnisch.},
pubstate = {published},
type = {inproceedings}
}

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• https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2018.00025/full

@inproceedings{malisz15,
title = {Dimensions of segmental variability: relationships between information density and prosodic structure},
author = {Zofia Malisz and Erika Schulz and Yoon Mi Oh and Bistra Andreeva and Bernd M{\"o}bius},
url = {https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2018.00025/full},
year = {2015},
date = {2015},
booktitle = {Workshop "Modeling variability in speech"},
address = {Stuttgart},
abstract = {

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