Notes for April 23rd Meeting:

Utterance: Okay. This says beige candy. It kind of looks a little weird.

Okay: There was disagreement as to whether the first or second syllable is accented, and in turn, disagreement as to the identity of the pitch accent. Those that argued for first syllable prominence assigned H*, but then had trouble explaining why the low phrase accent doesn't spread all the way back through the second syllable (but Laurie would say it does, and it just doesn't look like it dos because the speaker has a low f0). Those that argued for second syllable prominence assigned H+!H* because they heard downstep from the first to the second syllable. However, there is no obvious downstep in the pitch track.

Perhaps the analysis is much simpler than either of these alternatives: H* L-L% with the H* aligned to the second syllable.

This says: We generally agreed that THIS SAYS forms its own intermediate phrase. However, we disagreed as to whether the fall from the H* was better represented as a L- (to explain the fall in pitch) or a !H- (because although it falls, it still sounds relatively high).

beige candy: The issue here is whether BEIGE forms its own intermediate phrase. It could be that what sounds like phrase final lengthening is really just a slowdown in overall speech rate.

It kind of looks a little weird:

(1) Pitch accent issues: What's accented? We simply disagreed. Some accented only a single word (KIND or LOOKS) and others accented as many as three (KIND, LOOKS, WEIRD). Notice how decisions about accent placement affect the entire transcription. For example, with only a single accent on either KIND or LOOKS, a high phrase accent explains the long plateau. With an additional accent on WEIRD, the long plateau reflects how the speaker stays high between two high accents.

The contour over KIND OF LOOKS deserves special mention. Notice that the dip is at least partly segmental: The /l/ pulls the pitch track down. While this doesn't rule out the possibility of a L+H* on LOOKS, it does mean that we don't need to include a low tone if we don't hear one. If LOOKS is accented, it's probably downstepped relative to an additional high tone of some kind (H* on KIND or via a H+!H* on LOOKS).

(2) Boundary issues: The boundary is rising. Isolate WEIRD and mark the elbow before the rise. If you play the rise by itself, you probably won't hear much of anything. But, play the plateau and then the entire word, and you'll hear the difference between a level WEIRD (H-L%), which was proposed, and the actual rising WEIRD (H-H%).