Links

Here are links to a variety of tone and intonation resources. In particular, the links focus on sites that provide actual acoustic data and audio samples that can be used for explanation, illustration, and instructions. Thanks to all those who have made such resources publicly available!

Theories of Tone and Intonation

StemML

A excellent tutorial overview of prosody developed by Chilin Shih as appears on this site.

PENTA

Parallel Encoding and Target Approximation model of intonation

ToBI

Originally developed for English but now the core of a large-scale multilingual effort, ToBI - Tones and Break Indices - provides a framework for transcribing the intonation and prosodic structure of a language.

INTSINT

An effort to develop an Internation transcription system for coding the intonation of utterances.

TILT

A phonetic model of acoustic events - pitch accents and boundary tones - in speech, an enhancement of Taylor's earlier RFC (Rise, Fall, Connection model)

Fujisaki

The Fujisaki model posits a superpositional framework in which, for example, pitch accents ride on an existing phrase contour. The site above links to an automatic system for extracting the relevant parameters.

Audio Examples

The Phonology of Tone and Intonation: Carlos Gusseshoven provides links to many of the acoustic examples in the text.

ToBI Tutorial

The tutorial has a large selection of audio examples with their associated transcriptions - both word and intonational - and pitch tracks. All examples and exercises are additionally available for download.

Haskins Laboratory

An outstanding introduction to articulatory synthesis with audio and vocal tract models.

PENTA tone contour generation

Includes scripts for smoothing of pitch tracks:

Synthesizing Emotional Speech

Examples from Walker, Cahn, and Whittaker: Synthesized examples from Casablanca under different emotional and politeness conditions. The Improvisation of Linguistic Style: Social and Affective Bases for Agent Personality. Marilyn A. Walker, Janet Cahn and Stephen J. Whittaker. Proceedings of the ACM Agents '97 Conference. February, 1997. 10-17.

Spoken Corrections

Examples of error spirals in human-computer dialogue and local corrections. Jump-in points: Examples from Shriberg et al: Can Prosody Aid in Understanding Multi-party Meeting?: Automatic Punctuations, Repairs, and Jump-in Points