Technique for the perceptual investigation of F contours with application to French

Two experimental techniques were used in this study: (1) an analysis of F0 contours of French sentences containing words likely to express the speaker's attitude (modals, negative, adverbs, quantifiers) and (2) listeners' judgements of the naturalness of synthetic sentences in which the F0 contour was systematically manipulated. The F0 contours were characterized by schematic patterns [J. Vaissière Res. Lab. Electron., Q. Prog. Report No. 115, MIT, 251-262 (1975)]. For all the sentences that were studied, the configurations of patterns frequently observed in the analyzed corpus were judged most natural when synthesized. This result suggests that the features of the F0 contours most relevant to naturalness are preserved in the pattern representation. Three types of patterns were distinguished: (1) a prominent, demarcative pattern (P2); (2) A PROMINENT, NOndemarcative pattern (PE); (3) nonprominent, nondemarcative patterns, A P2 pattern often occurred at the end of a syntactic constituent. Listeners' judgements showed that a P2 at the end of a syntactic constituent is rarely required for naturalness, but a P2 in contradiction to syntax causes unnaturalness. Prominent patterns (P2 or PE) often occurred on negatives, adverbs, and quantifiers. However, the presence or absence of a prominent pattern on these words does not affect naturalness.