A Musical Approach to Speech Melody

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Phonetics
• Musicology

Background:

• Current phonetic and phonological models of speech melody often oversimplify pitch contours by focusing on localized targets or key pitch changes.
• These methods can neglect the acoustic details and melodic nuances of entire utterances, limiting comprehensive prosodic analysis.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce and validate a musical notation approach for representing speech melody with intervallic precision.
• To provide a more comprehensive model for analyzing the pitch contours of all syllables within spoken utterances.
• To explore the potential for integrating speech rhythm and melody into a unified representation of speech prosody.

Main Methods:

• Recorded native Canadian English speakers reading various test items (words to sentences).
• Converted fundamental frequency (F0) trajectories from Hertz to semitones.
• Averaged F0 data across speakers and transcribed relative pitch into musical scores.

Main Results:

• Quantified local and global pitch changes across declarative, imperative, and interrogative sentences.
• Observed that speech, when analyzed musically, is fundamentally atonal.
• Demonstrated the capability to explore melodic dynamics specific to different sentence types.

Conclusions:

• Musical notation offers a precise method for analyzing speech melody, capturing pitch information for all syllables.
• This approach enables a more detailed quantification of pitch excursions and inter-speaker pitch usage.
• The musical framework holds potential for unifying speech rhythm and melody into a comprehensive model of prosody, surpassing current linguistic limitations.