Voice quality and f0 in prosody: towards a holistic account

This paper presents a discussion of the role of voice quality in prosody. Illustrations from past production and perception data by the authors indicate that source parameters other than f0 are an inherent part of prosody, implicated in both its linguistic and paralinguistic functions. While prosodic (intonational) analyses of a language tend to be largely presented in terms of f0 dynamics, the argument here is for an integrative approach, where f0 and voice quality – two dimensions of the voice source – are treated together, and are related to the temporal/rhythmic structure of utterances. This should yield a fuller understanding of the nature of prosody and of the underlying production and perceptual correlates of prosodic elements such as pitch accent, declination, focus, phrase boundaries, etc. Such an approach may also serve to bring together the currently fragmented accounts of two core aspects of prosodic functioning: its role in signalling (i) linguistic, contrastive and discourse-related information and (ii) in communicating speaker affect, i.e. mood, emotional state and attitude. While the illustrations presented here provide initial hypotheses, a newly initiated project on Irish prosody will seek to incorporate such a holistic approach to prosodic analysis.