Two related issues were investigated in the computational modeling of Nguni prosody, based on annotated databases of isiZulu and isiXhosa speech. Firstly, authors show that a simple template can be used to describe the tonal characteristics of vowels and adjectives spoken in isolation, and that contextual effects have only a mild impact on this template. This analysis was based on a simple mapping between pitch and tone; in the second part of the paper, authors show that pitch and amplitude actually play comparable roles in producing tonal precepts
Reference:
Govender, N., et al. 2006. Computational models of prosody in the Nguni languages. Multiling 2006: ISCA tutorial and research workshop on multilingual speech and language processing, Stellenbosch, April 2006, pp 6
Govender, N., Kuun, C., Zimu, V., Barnard, E., & Davel, M. (2006). Computational models of prosody in the Nguni languages. http://hdl.handle.net/10204/1156
Govender, Natasha, C Kuun, V Zimu, E Barnard, and M Davel. "Computational models of prosody in the Nguni languages." (2006): http://hdl.handle.net/10204/1156
Govender N, Kuun C, Zimu V, Barnard E, Davel M, Computational models of prosody in the Nguni languages; 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/10204/1156 .
