In the past four years a series of experiments was conducted to investigate functional differences among a number of Dutch accent-lending pitch configurations. Using the Grammar of Dutch Intonation [1] as a starting point, meaning hypotheses were derived from the linguistic analyses by Gussenhoven [2] and Keijsper [3]. Perception experiments - in which subjects matched situational contexts with target utterances spoken with the various pitch accent types - provided support for the hypothesis that 1&A (pointed hat, H*L, default accent) marks information as prominent and new, while other accent types are more limited in use because they carry another additional meaning aspect, e.g., prominence and continuation. These results are potentially relevant to the improvement of speech understanding as well as speech output in Dutch spoken dialogue systems.
Cite as: Caspers, J. (1999) The meaning of melodic elements in Dutch. Proc. ETRW on Dialogue and Prosody, 77-82
@inproceedings{caspers99_diapro,
author={Johanneke Caspers},
title={{The meaning of melodic elements in Dutch}},
year=1999,
booktitle={Proc. ETRW on Dialogue and Prosody},
pages={77--82}
}