The effect of pitch peak alignment on sentence type identification in Russian

This paper reports the results of an experimental phonetic study examining pitch peak alignment in production and perception of three-syllable one-word sentences with phonetic rising-falling pitch movement by speakers of Russian. The first part of the study (Experiment 1) utilizes 22 one-word three-syllable utterances read by five female speakers of Russian as a declarative, an exclamation, and an interrogative. Significant differences in the alignment of pitch peak across declaratives and exclamations on the one hand and interrogatives on the other hand are observed. The second experiment tests whether these pitch peak alignment differences are employed in speech perception. Experiment 2 is performed with a series of resynthesized three-syllable stimuli which differ by 14 locations of the pitch peak, two segmental bases used for resynthesis (declarative and interrogative) and two heights of the pitch peak (270 and 320Hz). The results of the experiment demonstrate that a shift in pitch peak alignment strongly affects listeners' perception of sentence type. The effects of pitch height and segmental base are also significant. Implications for Russian intonation system are discussed.