In:Above and Beyond the Segments: Experimental linguistics and phonetics
Edited by Johanneke Caspers, Yiya Chen, Willemijn Heeren, Jos Pacilly, Niels O. Schiller and Ellen van Zanten
[Not in series 189] 2014
► pp. 131–143
Does boundary tone production in whispered speech depend on its bearer? Exploring a case of tonal crowding in whisper
Published online: 10 December 2014
https://doi.org/10.1075/z.189.11hee
https://doi.org/10.1075/z.189.11hee
How does boundary tone production in whisper depend on the presence of a
pitch accent in the same syllable? Acoustic correlates of boundary tones were
investigated when produced on disyllabic, utterance-final words that carried
a nuclear accent, and that varied in lexical stress position (strong-weak versus
weak-strong). In the former case, boundary tone and nuclear accent do not
coincide, whereas in the latter, they land on the same syllable. Acoustic analyses
showed that intensity, the second formant, and the power of the first and second
formants were higher when a question as opposed to a statement was produced.
Not all differences became significant in both word types; in the tonal crowding
case acoustic differences were smaller.
References (33)
Abramson, A.S. (1972). Tonal experiments with whispered Thai. In A. Valdman (Ed.), Papers on linguistics and phonetics to the memory of Pierre Delattre (pp. 29–44). The Hague: Mouton.
Bibyk, S., Heeren, W., Gunlogson, C., & Tanenhaus, M.K. (2013). Asking or telling? Real-time processing of boundary tones.
Proceedings of the LSA annual meeting
, Boston, January 3–6, 2013.
Boersma, P. (2001). Praat, a system for doing phonetics by computer. Glot International, 5, 341–345.
Cho, T., & McQueen, J.M. (2005). Prosodic influences on consonant production in Dutch: Effects of prosodic boundaries, phrasal accent and lexical stress. Journal of Phonetics, 22, 121–157.
Coleman, J., Grabe, E., & Braun, B. (2004). Larynx movements and intonation in whispered speech [summary of research supported by British Academy grant SG-36269]. Last retrieved on November 18, 2011, from [URL]
De Cheveigné, A. (2005). Pitch perception models. In C.J. Plack, A. Oxenham, R.R. Fay, & A.N. Popper (Eds.), Pitch – neural coding and perception (pp. 169–233). New York: Springer.
Denes, P. (1959). A preliminary investigation of certain aspects of intonation. Language and Speech, 2, 106–122.
Fónagy, J. (1969). Accent et intonation dans la parole chuchotée [Accent and intonation in whispered speech]. Phonetica, 20, 177–192.
Gussenhoven, C. (2002). Intonation and biology. In H. Jacobs, & W.L. Wetzels (Eds.), Liber Amicorum Bernard Bichakjian (pp. 59–82). Maastricht: Shaker.
Heeren, W.F.L., & Van Heuven, V.J. (2009). Perception and production of boundary tones in whispered Dutch.
Proceedings of Interspeech 2009
, Brighton, 2411–2414.
. (2011). Acoustics of whispered boundary tones: effects of vowel type and tonal crowding.
Proceedings of the ICPhS
, Hong Kong, 851–854.
Heeren, W.F.L., & Lorenzi, C. (2014). Prosody perception in normal and whispered French. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 135(4), 2026–2040.
Higashikawa, M., & Minifie, F.D. (1999). Acoustic–perceptual correlates of “whisper pitch” in synthetically generated vowels. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 42, 583–591.
Higashikawa, M., Nakai, K., Sakakura, A., & Takahashi, H. (1996). Perceived pitch of whispered vowels–relationship with formant frequencies: A preliminary study. Journal of Voice, 2, 155–158.
Kohler, K.J. (2011). Communicative functions integrate segments in prosodies and prosodies in segments. Phonetica, 68, 26–56.
Kong, Y.-Y., & Zeng, F.G. (2006). Temporal and spectral cues in Mandarin tone recognition. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 120, 2830–2840.
Konno, H., Kanemitsu, H., Toyama, J., & Shimbo, M. (2006). Spectral properties of Japanese whispered vowels referred to pitch. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 120, 3378.
Lass, N.J., Hughes, K.R., Bowyer, M.D., Waters, L.T., & Bourne, V.T. (1976). Speaker sex identification from voiced, whispered, and filtered isolated vowels. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 59, 675–678.
Liu, S., & Samuel, A.G. (2004). Perception of Mandarin lexical tones when F0 is neutralized. Language and Speech, 47, 109–138.
Meyer–Eppler, W. (1957). Realization of prosodic features in whispered speech. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 19, 104–106.
Mooshammer, C. (2010). Acoustic and laryngographic measures of the laryngeal reflexes of linguistic and vocal effort in German. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 127, 1047–1058.
Niebuhr, O. (2008). Coding of intonational meanings beyond F0: Evidence from utterance–final /t/ aspiration in German. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 124, 1252–1263.
Schouten, J.F. (1938). The perception of subjective tones. Proceedings of the ‘Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie voor Wetenschappen’, 41, 1086–1093.
Singh, P.G., & Hirsh, I.J. (1992). Influence of spectral locus and F0 changes on the pitch and timbre of complex tones. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 92, 2650–2661.
Sluijter, A., & Van Heuven, V.J. (1996). Spectral balance as an acoustic correlate of linguistic stress. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 100, 2471–2485.
Tartter, V.C., & Braun, D. (1994). Hearing smiles and frowns in normal and whisper registers. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 96, 2101–2107.
Traunmüller, H., & Eriksson, A. (2010). Acoustic effects of variation in vocal effort by men, women, and children. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 67, 1014–1030.
Uchanski, R.M. (2008). Clear speech. In D.B. Pisoni, & R.E. Remez (Eds.), The handbook of speech perception (pp. 207–235). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
Cited by (1)
Cited by one other publication
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 24 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.
