D Robert Ladd
Biographic Data
| ID | 211463 |
|---|---|
| NAME | D Robert Ladd |
| GIVEN NAMES | D Robert |
| FAMILY NAME | Ladd |
| SIGNATURE | LADD D R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Edinburgh |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 49 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 520 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 49 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1978 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
L1 Attrition vis-à-vis L2 Acquisition
Late bilingual speakers immersed in a second language (L2) environment often experience the non-pathological attrition of their first language (L1), exhibiting selective and reversible changes in L1 processing and production. While attrition research has largely focused on long-term residents in anglophone countries, examining changes primarily within a single L1 domain, the present study employs a novel experimental design to investigate L1 attr…
Transitory and sustained Cf0 effects
Prosodic Prominence Across Languages
Current empirical work on prosodic prominence is based on theoretical developments in the mid-twentieth century, in which a generalized notion of stress (in word pairs like English insight/incite and in sentence pairs like THEY left/they LEFT) was replaced by a distinction between an abstract notion of word stress and a concrete notion of phrasal accent or prominence that applies to specific words in an utterance. Much research since then has foc…
Intonation
On the systematic nature of Dinka noun number morphology
We present an analysis of noun number marking in Dinka, based on Andersen’s system of vowel grades and a new system of tone classes. Assuming that the ‘unmarked’ grade 1 form can be either singular or plural, we show that the morphology is more systematic than has been previously suggested. Roughly half of our dataset can be treated as synchronically regular, and in more than half the remainder the only exceptional features are simple alternation…
Tone–Melody Matching in tone-Language Singing
Singing in tone languages has been the subject of a good deal of research, which shows that text-setting constraints are the heart of the solution to respecting both the linguistic and the musical functions of pitch. The most important principle in maintaining intelligibility of song texts seems to be the avoidance of contrary settings: musical pitch movement up or down from one syllable to the next should not be the opposite of the linguisticall…
Obstruent voicing effects on F0, but without voicing
Underspecification in intonation revisited
We are naturally pleased that Xu et al. (2015) have taken the trouble to address our critique of the PENTA model, and it is useful to have a concise restatement of PENTA's aims and assumptions. However, we believe that their reply does not address the key point of our earlier paper (Arvaniti & Ladd 2009), which was that syllable-by-syllable specification of F0 does not makes theoretical sense in a language where F0 functions at the phrase or utte…
The American Four-Level Analysis of Intonation Contours
The four-level analysis of English intonation prevalent in American structuralist work from the mid-1940s to the late 1960s is variably credited to 1945 publications by both Kenneth Lee Pike (1912-2000) and Rulon S. Wells (1919-2008). However, Pike's work was the basis of published language teaching materials as early as 1942. The author reports a brief correspondence with Pike in 1989, which makes clear that Pike felt that his own contribution w…
Correlational Studies in Typological and Historical Linguistics
We review a number of recent studies that have identified either correlations between different linguistic features (e.g., implicational universals) or correlations between linguistic features and nonlinguistic properties of speakers or their environment (e.g., effects of geography on vocabulary). We compare large-scale quantitative studies with more traditional theoretical and historical linguistic research and identify divergent assumptions and…
Greek wh-questions and the phonology of intonation
The intonation of Greek wh-questions consists of a rise-fall followed by a low plateau and a final rise. Using acoustic data, we show (i) that the exact contour shape depends on the length of the question, and (ii) that the position of the first peak and the low plateau depends on the position of the stressed syllables, and shows predictable adjustments in alignment, depending on the proximity of adjacent tonal targets. Models that specify the F0…
Structural and dialectal effects on pitch peak alignment in two varieties of British English
On the distinction between regular and irregular inflectional morphology
Discussions of the psycholinguistic significance of regularity in inflectional morphology generally deal with languages in which regular forms can be clearly identified and revolve around whether there are distinct processing mechanisms for regular and irregular forms. We present a detailed description of Dinka's notoriously irregular noun number inflection and suggest that no pattern can usefully be designated as regular. Psycholinguistic studie…
Intonational Phonology
This second edition presents a completely revised overview of research on intonational phonology since the 1970s, including new material on research developments since the mid 1990s. It contains a new section discussing the research on the alignment of pitch features that has developed since the first edition was published, a substantially rewritten section on ToBI transcription that takes account of the application of ToBI principles to other la…
Forty years of language change on Martha's Vineyard
This short report presents results from a replication of Labov's study of language variation and language change in progress on Martha's Vineyard (MV). The original paper was revolutionary in many respects: it established that the relationship between social and linguistic variables could be systematically studied, and put forward the construct of apparent time as a means of inferring diachronic change in progress based on synchronic patterns. By…
Tonal Association and Tonal Alignment
This paper compares the production and perception of the rise-fall contour of contrastive statements and the final rise-fall part of polar questions in Greek. The results show that these superficially similar rise-falls exhibit fine phonetic differences in the alignment of tonal targets with the segmental string, and that these differences can be used by native speakers under experimental conditions to identify the two contour types. It is furthe…
Effects of vowel length and "right context" on the alignment of Dutch nuclear accents
Alignment of “Phrase Accent” Lows in Dutch Falling Rising Questions
In the first part of this study, we measured the alignment (relative to segmental landmarks) of the low F0 turning points between the accentual fall and the final boundary rise in short Dutch falling-rising questions of the form Do you live in [place name]? produced as read speech in a laboratory setting. We found that the alignment of these turning points is affected by the location of a postaccentual secondary stressed syllable if one is presen…
Alignment of L and H in bitonal pitch accents
On the phonetics and phonology of "segmental anchoring" of F0
"Sagging transitions" between high pitch accents in English
Phonological conditioning of peak alignment in rising pitch accents in Dutch
This paper deals with the factors that influence the alignment of F0 movements with phonetic segments. It reports two experiments on the alignment of rising prenuclear pitch accents in Dutch. In experiment 1, it is shown that the final peak of the rise is aligned at the end of the vowel if the accented syllable contains a long vowel, but during the following consonant if the accented syllable contains a short vowel. The beginning of the rise is c…
On the place of phrase accents in intonational phonology
Many theories of intonational phonology have granted some special status to pitch features that occur at the edges of prosodic domains, contrasting them with prominence-lending pitch configurations. The standard American structuralist theory that flourished in the 1950s (Trager & Smith 1951) drew a clear distinction between PITCH PHONEMES and JUNCTURE PHONEMES, the former constituting the body of a contour and the latter describing the movements …
Editors' Report for Volume 43
Constant “segmental anchoring” of F movements under changes in speech rate
This study develops the notion of the “segmental anchoring” of F0 movements, specifically, the finding that both the beginning and the end of a rising pitch accent are anchored to specific points in segmental structure [Arvaniti et al., J. Phonetics 26, 3–25 (1998)]. If there are segmental anchors for rising accents (and if, as shown by Arvaniti et al., the F0 level of the beginning and ending points is unaffected by the experimental manipulation…
Stability of tonal alignment
On the phonetics and phonology of "segmental anchoring" of F0
On the place of phrase accents in intonational phonology
Many theories of intonational phonology have granted some special status to pitch features that occur at the edges of prosodic domains, contrasting them with prominence-lending pitch configurations. The standard American structuralist theory that flourished in the 1950s (Trager & Smith 1951) drew a clear distinction between PITCH PHONEMES and JUNCTURE PHONEMES, the former constituting the body of a contour and the latter describing the movements …
Intonational phrasing
The past decade has seen a good deal of research on the relation between phonology and syntax, and on the nature of the phonological structures – both intonational and metrical – on to which syntactic structure must be mapped (e.g. Liberman & Prince 1977; Pierrehumbert 1980; Selkirk 1984; Kaisse 1985; Nespor & Vogel 1986). While some of this work breaks genuinely new ground, in at least one respect it relies on a theoretical legacy from work goin…
"Sagging transitions" between high pitch accents in English
The perception of intonational emphasis
Intonation and Its Parts
Phonological Features of Intonational Peaks
A new model of intonational phonology is here developed, based primarily on the ‘tone sequence’ approaches of Bruce & Gårding 1978 and Pierrehumbert 1980. As in those works, contours are seen as sequences of pitch accents composed of high and low tones. Unlike those works, this model uses cross-classifying features to represent the scaling (height) of tones, and the alignment of tones in time relative to their associated syllables. This form of r…
Effects of vowel length and "right context" on the alignment of Dutch nuclear accents
Stylized Intonation
The English intonation often referred to as a calling contour—a stepping-down sequence of two level tones—is not inherently associated with calling, but rather conveys the implication that an utterance is in some way stereotyped or stylized. Vivid and quite precise nuances in specific usages can be accounted for by the abstract meaning ‘stylized’. This meaning is not restricted to the stepping-down contour, but is a more general phenomenon: at le…
Tonal Association and Tonal Alignment
This paper compares the production and perception of the rise-fall contour of contrastive statements and the final rise-fall part of polar questions in Greek. The results show that these superficially similar rise-falls exhibit fine phonetic differences in the alignment of tonal targets with the segmental string, and that these differences can be used by native speakers under experimental conditions to identify the two contour types. It is furthe…
Structural and dialectal effects on pitch peak alignment in two varieties of British English
Obstruent voicing effects on F0, but without voicing
Correlational Studies in Typological and Historical Linguistics
We review a number of recent studies that have identified either correlations between different linguistic features (e.g., implicational universals) or correlations between linguistic features and nonlinguistic properties of speakers or their environment (e.g., effects of geography on vocabulary). We compare large-scale quantitative studies with more traditional theoretical and historical linguistic research and identify divergent assumptions and…
Alignment of “Phrase Accent” Lows in Dutch Falling Rising Questions
In the first part of this study, we measured the alignment (relative to segmental landmarks) of the low F0 turning points between the accentual fall and the final boundary rise in short Dutch falling-rising questions of the form Do you live in [place name]? produced as read speech in a laboratory setting. We found that the alignment of these turning points is affected by the location of a postaccentual secondary stressed syllable if one is presen…
Alignment of L and H in bitonal pitch accents
Forty years of language change on Martha's Vineyard
This short report presents results from a replication of Labov's study of language variation and language change in progress on Martha's Vineyard (MV). The original paper was revolutionary in many respects: it established that the relationship between social and linguistic variables could be systematically studied, and put forward the construct of apparent time as a means of inferring diachronic change in progress based on synchronic patterns. By…
Secondary stress and metrical rhythm
This paper explores the relationship between some postlexical prosodic processes and metrical rhythm. The main focus is on Spanish secondary stress and related phenomena. Overall, as in previous studies, we shall differentiate three types of stress in Spanish: primary word stress, corresponding to the highest prominence in the lexical word, main phrasal stress, which signals the accentual peak in the phrase or phonic group, and secondary stress, …
Influence of adjacent pitch accents on each other's perceived prominence
On the distinction between regular and irregular inflectional morphology
Discussions of the psycholinguistic significance of regularity in inflectional morphology generally deal with languages in which regular forms can be clearly identified and revolve around whether there are distinct processing mechanisms for regular and irregular forms. We present a detailed description of Dinka's notoriously irregular noun number inflection and suggest that no pattern can usefully be designated as regular. Psycholinguistic studie…
Intonation
Prosodic Prominence Across Languages
Current empirical work on prosodic prominence is based on theoretical developments in the mid-twentieth century, in which a generalized notion of stress (in word pairs like English insight/incite and in sentence pairs like THEY left/they LEFT) was replaced by a distinction between an abstract notion of word stress and a concrete notion of phrasal accent or prominence that applies to specific words in an utterance. Much research since then has foc…
On the Theoretical Status of “the Baseline” in Modelling Intonation
The “baseline”, as an aspect of fundamental frequency (F o ) declination, is commonly defined as a straight (often logarithmic) line fitted to the valleys in the F o contour. In a recent study, in line with a good deal of past work on declination, Terken (1991) assumed that the baseline so defined would represent a reference value for normalizing the perceived prominence of pitch accents. The results of the study did not bear out this assumption,…
Presenting autosegmental phonology
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Stylized Intonation
The English intonation often referred to as a calling contour—a stepping-down sequence of two level tones—is not inherently associated with calling, but rather conveys the implication that an utterance is in some way stereotyped or stylized. Vivid and quite precise nuances in specific usages can be accounted for by the abstract meaning ‘stylized’. This meaning is not restricted to the stepping-down contour, but is a more general phenomenon: at le…
Questions of Intonation
The Structure of Intonational Meaning
Linguistics
Even, Focus, and Normal Stress
The two traditional schools of thought about sentence-accent placement - the ‘Nuclear Stress Rule approach’ and the ‘semantic highlighting approach’ - do not really offer competing accounts of the same phenomenon, but emphasize different aspects of the overall problem. A good starting point for integrating these two approaches is provided by recent work by Gussenhoven. His work makes crucial use of the notion that the focus of a sentence may exte…
Phonological Features of Intonational Peaks
A new model of intonational phonology is here developed, based primarily on the ‘tone sequence’ approaches of Bruce & Gårding 1978 and Pierrehumbert 1980. As in those works, contours are seen as sequences of pitch accents composed of high and low tones. Unlike those works, this model uses cross-classifying features to represent the scaling (height) of tones, and the alignment of tones in time relative to their associated syllables. This form of r…
Declination
One of the most widespread – and widely studied – properties of speech fundamental frequency (Fo) is a tendency to decline gradually during the course of utterances. This tendency has been given a variety of names, of which the best known is probably DECLINATION. This is the term I shall use in this paper. The purpose of the paper is to review past work on declination as it affects the phonological and phonetic modelling of Fo contours, and to ou…
Prosody
Secondary stress and metrical rhythm
This paper explores the relationship between some postlexical prosodic processes and metrical rhythm. The main focus is on Spanish secondary stress and related phenomena. Overall, as in previous studies, we shall differentiate three types of stress in Spanish: primary word stress, corresponding to the highest prominence in the lexical word, main phrasal stress, which signals the accentual peak in the phrase or phonic group, and secondary stress, …
Intonational phrasing
The past decade has seen a good deal of research on the relation between phonology and syntax, and on the nature of the phonological structures – both intonational and metrical – on to which syntactic structure must be mapped (e.g. Liberman & Prince 1977; Pierrehumbert 1980; Selkirk 1984; Kaisse 1985; Nespor & Vogel 1986). While some of this work breaks genuinely new ground, in at least one respect it relies on a theoretical legacy from work goin…
English Word-Stress
Rumanian
Intonation and Its Parts
Declination ‘‘reset’’ and the hierarchical organization of utterances
Sequences of accented fundamental frequency (F0) peaks (‘‘toplines’’) were measured for sentences of the form A and B but C and A but B and C, where A, B, and C are separate main clauses with three (four in a replication experiment) accented words each. It was hypothesized that the differences in boundary strength (but-boundary stronger than and ) would be reflected in the way declination was reset following the boundaries. There were significant…
Prosodic patterns in spoken English
Aspects of pitch realisation in Yoruba
A great many languages of the world exhibit phenomena of FO DOWNTREND – phenomena whereby, other things being equal, the fundamental frequency (Fo) of the speaking voice declines over the course of an utterance. That much is uncontroversial; further details are either simply unknown or the subject of considerable debate. The purpose of the study reported here was to shed light on some of these unknown or uncertain matters by the controlled invest…
Intonation
Presenting autosegmental phonology
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
On the Theoretical Status of “the Baseline” in Modelling Intonation
The “baseline”, as an aspect of fundamental frequency (F o ) declination, is commonly defined as a straight (often logarithmic) line fitted to the valleys in the F o contour. In a recent study, in line with a good deal of past work on declination, Terken (1991) assumed that the baseline so defined would represent a reference value for normalizing the perceived prominence of pitch accents. The results of the study did not bear out this assumption,…
Influence of adjacent pitch accents on each other's perceived prominence
The perception of intonational emphasis
A critical remark onIntonational Phonology
Stability of tonal alignment
Constant “segmental anchoring” of F movements under changes in speech rate
This study develops the notion of the “segmental anchoring” of F0 movements, specifically, the finding that both the beginning and the end of a rising pitch accent are anchored to specific points in segmental structure [Arvaniti et al., J. Phonetics 26, 3–25 (1998)]. If there are segmental anchors for rising accents (and if, as shown by Arvaniti et al., the F0 level of the beginning and ending points is unaffected by the experimental manipulation…
Editors'Report for Volume 42
Linguistics (38 works) · Phonetics and Phonology Research (37 works) · Philosophy (31 works) · Psychology (26 works) · Linguistic Variation and Morphology (25 works) · Computer Science (24 works) · Mathematics (19 works) · Physics (15 works) · Speech recognition (13 works) · Speech Recognition and Synthesis (12 works)