Relations between prominence and articulatory-prosodic cues in emotional speech

This study investigates the relations between the degree of prominence and articulatory-prosodic cues in emotional speech. In particular, this study considers articulatory parameters driven from the Converter/Distributor (C/D) model. The goal is to obtain a better understanding of the link among syllable magnitude in the C/D model, the empirical way to measure it in literature, and syllable-level prominence, and to examine emotional variations appearing in this relation. Since prosodic variations are important cues for prominence and emotion in speech, relations with prosodic parameters (f0, energy, duration) are also considered. Electromagnetic articulography data of two speakers were used for analysis. The degree of prominence was computed on crowd-sourcing annotation data, using the Rapid Prosody Transcription. Results indicate that movements of linguistically critical articulator, energy, syllable magnitude measure are highly correlated with prominence; f0 is relatively less correlated. The movements of linguistically critical articulator tend to be more correlated than syllable magnitude measure. Inter-speaker variability and emotion-dependent variations are also reported. These results suggest complex relations between prominence and articulatory-prosodic cues. They also suggest that incorporating more articulatory and prosodic behaviors than the conventional way can better relate to perception of prominence.