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From: sandell@ils.nwu.edu (Greg Sandell)
Newsgroups: comp.music
Subject: Re: Hierarchical dynamic specification(more on speech stress)
Message-ID: <1914@anaxagoras.ils.nwu.edu>
Date: 26 Sep 90 14:55:23 GMT
References: <83930@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Sender: news@anaxagoras.ils.nwu.edu
Reply-To: sandell@ils.nwu.edu (Greg Sandell)
Organization: The Institute for the Learning Sciences
Lines: 44

In article <83930@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>,
mark@cheops.cis.ohio-state.edu (Mark Jansen) writes:
> 
> 	I for one would like to know more about how human speech is done as
> 	an art form.  More specifically what are the typical forms of
> 	human language stress and rhythm in theater poetry and stuff.
> 
> 	Any good textbooks on this?
> 
> --
> Mark Jansen, Department of Computer and Information Science
> The Ohio State University; 2036 Neil Ave., Columbus, OH USA 43210-1277
> mark@cis.ohio-state.edu

I have done quite a bit of work on analysis of speech intonation.
In fact, I was thinking of posting a bibliography on the net
sometime soon (when will I find time?).  The best source that
I found which covered the subject from an interpretive point of
view was the following:

Bolinger, Dwight Le Merton, 1907-
  Intonation and its uses : melody in grammar and discourse / Dwight Bolinger.
-- Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, 1989.
  xi, 470 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.
  Includes bibliographical references (p. <421>-454).
  Includes indexes.
 SUBJECT HEADINGS (Library of Congress; use sl= ):
     Intonation (Phonetics)
     Grammar, Comparative and general.
     Language and languages--Variation.

My own work in intonation has focussed on getting a computer (a Mac) to
analyze intonation by using pitch- and envelope-detecting algorithms.
Surprisingly, a pitch trace (tracking the fundamental frequency of
the phonated portions of speech) is not the most informative way
of capturing `intonation' (a vague term to be sure).  A pitch trace
does not show the way certain words are stressed relative to others
very well, which is what most people want to see in an intonation
curve; an amplitude envelope trace captures this alot better.

****************************************************************
* Greg Sandell (sandell@ils.nwu.edu)              Evanston, IL *
* Institute for the Learning Sciences, Northwestern University *
****************************************************************