ASA 128th Meeting - Austin, Texas - 1994 Nov 28 .. Dec 02

5pSP11. Some control experiments on a model for prominence perception.

H. H. Rump

Dik J. Hermes

Inst. for Percept. Res. IPO, P.O. Box 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands

According to the model proposed by Hermes and Rump [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. (in press)] the prominence lent by accent-lending pitch movements is proportional to the pitch-level difference between the vowel nucleus of the accented syllable and the vowel nucleus of the preceding syllable. The pitch level on the lower declination line or baseline and the pitch level on the upper declination line or topline are thus regarded as equally important. By varying the height of the pitch levels on the baselines this assumption was tested against the alternative assumption that listeners equated pitch levels on the topline of each of the stimuli when adjusting prominences to be equal. Results showed that pitch levels on the toplines were adjusted to be more or less equal, but that the pitch-level difference between the low and the high pitch level influenced the adjusted height of the high pitch level, too. It is concluded that the proposed model makes claims about the relevance of the position of the low pitch level which is too strong. The role of pitch levels in relation to the perception of prominence will be discussed.