Cumming Ruth E
Centre for Neuroscience in Education, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
Phonetica. 2011;68(4):256-77. doi: 10.1159/000335416. Epub 2012 Jan 20.
Two previous experiments demonstrated that f0 and duration are interdependent in the perception of rhythmic groups in speech and sentence rhythmicality, and that the relative weighting of tonal and durational cues depends on listeners' native language. The listeners were native speakers of Swiss German, Swiss French, or Metropolitan French (i.e. from France). The experiment reported here investigates a means of applying this perceptual finding to production data from these three languages, to make a rhythm metric, the Pairwise Variability Index (PVI), perceptually informed. The relative weighting that an appropriate duration and an appropriate f0 contributed to listeners' rhythmicality judgements is calculated, and these language-specific weighting values are incorporated into combined durational- tonal PVIs, to quantify rhythm in the three languages. The results demonstrate that Swiss German and Swiss/Metropolitan French are distinct according to classic durational PVIs, but more similar according to PVIs which are acoustically multidimensional and language-specifically weighted. It is concluded that rhythm produced by speakers, when quantified to account for the acoustic multidimensionality and language-specificity of rhythm perceived by listeners, may be less cross-linguistically divergent than durational rhythm metrics suggest. An evaluation of these language-specifically weighted PVIs concludes that if rhythm metrics remain in use, they should link rhythm perception with rhythm production.
之前的两项实验表明，在言语节奏组的感知和句子节奏性方面，基频（f0）和时长是相互依存的，并且音高和时长线索的相对权重取决于听众的母语。听众为瑞士德语、瑞士法语或标准法语（即来自法国）的母语者。本文所报告的实验研究了一种将这一感知结果应用于这三种语言的产出数据的方法，以使一种节奏指标——两两变异指数（PVI）——具有感知依据。计算出合适的时长和合适的基频对听众节奏性判断的相对权重，并将这些特定语言的权重值纳入时长 - 音高综合PVI中，以量化这三种语言的节奏。结果表明，根据经典的时长PVI，瑞士德语与瑞士法语/标准法语不同，但根据声学上多维度且特定语言加权的PVI，它们更为相似。研究得出的结论是，当对说话者产出的节奏进行量化以考虑听众所感知节奏的声学多维度性和特定语言性时，跨语言的差异可能比时长节奏指标所显示的要小。对这些特定语言加权PVI的评估得出结论，如果节奏指标仍在使用，它们应该将节奏感知与节奏产出联系起来。
