ITRW on Speech and Emotion September 5-7, 2000 Newcastle, Northern Ireland, UK

Attitudes and yes-no questions in standard French: Testing two hypotheses

Olivier Piot

Institut de Phonétique de l'Université Paris III, France

Two hypotheses are tested here, one about the use of F0 to convey an attitude of ignorance, the other about the expression of motivation by means of F0, vocal intensity and speech rate. Sixteen Klatt-synthesised prosodic variations of a yes-no question « Natacha? » (In French) are used for this test. Results show that greater ignorance is expressed by higher final F0 (and not by speech rate, final /a/ initial F0 or intensity rise), greater desire to know by both higher speech rate and higher final vowel pitch register. Both hypotheses are satisfyingly verified, and this experiment allows to state them in a more precise way, so it may contribute to the theoretical study of the expression of emotions and attitudes by prosody.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Piot, Olivier (2000): "Attitudes and yes-no questions in standard French: Testing two hypotheses", In SpeechEmotion-2000, 81-85.