Influence of lexical tones on intonation in kammu

The aim of this study is to investigate how the presence of lexical tones influences the realization of focal accent and sentence intonation. The language studied is Kammu, a language particularly well suited for the study as it has both tonal and non-tonal dialects. The main finding is that lexical tone exerts an influence on both sentence and focal accent in the tonal dialect to such a strong degree that we can postulate a hierarchy where lexical tone is strongest followed by sentence accent, with focal accent exerting the weakest influence on the F0 contour.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: INTERSPEECH
• Authors: Anastasia Karlsson, David House, Jan-Olof Svantesson, Damrong Tayanin
• Keywords: Focal Accent, INTERSPEECH 2010, Lexical Tone, Sentence Intonation, Signal Processing