Can speech pitch perception be measured language-independently?

Willemijn Heeren | Leiden University

Andrei A. Avram | Bucharest University

Anna Cardinaletti | Ca’ Foscari University of Venice

Martine Coene | University of Antwerp

Francesca Volpato | Ca’ Foscari University of Venice

Recently, a test battery was developed with the goal of assessing perception of F⁰ in linguistic, but language-independent, contexts by listeners from different language backgrounds. Test validation using Dutch, Italian and Romanian listeners generally showed comparable performance. In this study we present cross-language results on how F⁰ contributes to prominence perception in Dutch (a Germanic language) and Italian and Romanian (Romance languages), as well as on how F⁰ trades off with duration, a second important cue to prominence. We discuss implications of these results for the language-independent set-up of the test battery.

Keywords: cue trading, prominence marking, pitch perception

Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

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Published online: 02 November 2012
https://doi.org/10.1075/avt.29.05hee

Can speech pitch perception be measured language-independently?