This paper investigates calling melodies produced by 21 Standard German
native speakers on a discourse completion task across two contexts:
(i) routine context — calling a child from afar to come in for
dinner; (ii) urgent context — calling a child from afar for a
chastising. The intent of this investigation is to bring attention
to other calling melodies found in German beside the vocative chant
and to give an insight to their acoustic profile.
Three major melodies
were identified in the two contexts: vocative chant (100% of routine
context productions), urgent call (100% of male urgent context productions,
52.2% female productions), and stern call (47.8% female urgent context
productions). A subsequent quantitative analysis was carried out on
these calls across these parameters: (i) tonal scaling at tonal landmarks;
(ii) proportional alignment of selected tonal landmarks with respect
to the stressed or last vowel; and (iii) amplitude (integral and RMS)
and (iv) duration of the stressed vowel, stressed syllable, and word.
The resulting data were analyzed using a linear mixed model approach.
The results point to significant differences in the contours produced
in the aforementioned parameters. We also proposed a phonological description
of the contours in the framework of Autosegmental-Metrical Phonology.
Cite as: Quiroz, S.I., Żygis, M. (2017) The Vocative Chant and Beyond: German Calling Melodies Under Routine and Urgent Contexts. Proc. Interspeech 2017, 1208-1212, doi: 10.21437/Interspeech.2017-1635
@inproceedings{quiroz17_interspeech,
author={Sergio I. Quiroz and Marzena Żygis},
title={{The Vocative Chant and Beyond: German Calling Melodies Under Routine and Urgent Contexts}},
year=2017,
booktitle={Proc. Interspeech 2017},
pages={1208--1212},
doi={10.21437/Interspeech.2017-1635}
}