Notes for February 18 and 25 Meetings

Overall pitch setting for this utterance: 25-225

Speaker A: Are you a penguin?

All agreed that there is an accent on "penguin" and some thought there might be an accent on "you". All agreed that the rising contour on "penguin" warranted a H% boundary tone.

Speaker A: 'Ah' or 'I' or 'Hi'

How you label this single syllable depends on what you think the speaker is saying. If he is saying "Ah" or "Hi" (since the two players just found each other in the virtual environment), it might be a complete intonation phrase (tones_b). If he is saying "I" or "Ah", he might be starting a new sentence, and then cutting himself off (tones_a). Even if he is cutting himself off, all agreed that there was enough lengthening to warrant an intermediate phrase, and a 3p can be used to indicate the pause-like prolongation with a phrase accent L- in the tone tier.

In tones_a, we were tempted to put a %r at the beginning of "okay", but given that the break index 3 in 3p already indicates the end of an intermediate phrase, the %r to begin the new i.p. is unnecessary. "Especially, %r should not be used after a 3p, where the (re)start of a new intonation contour is already implicit in the break index for the intermediate phrase." (p.37 of the ToBI Guide, end of Section 3.5)

Speaker A: Okay

Some transcribers heard this stretch as flat (H-L%) and others heard it as falling (L-L%).

Speaker B: Okay. He'll

As often seems to happen with "okay", there was disagreement as to which syllable is accented.

Speaker A: What do I look like

Not everyone agreed that "like" is accented, but if it is, then it's a !H*. Additionally, some transcribers heard the end of the contour as flat, and others heard it as falling.

Speaker B: You're f- you're a woman

Whatever the F- was supposed to be, it's clearly cut off (1p). Although the words in the phrase are clearly restarted (i.e., the "you're" is repeated), there doesn't seem to be any tonal evidence of beginning a new intonation phrase. Because there was no apparent "change in F0 range or amplitude", the group did not transcribe a %r.

Again, some transcribers heard the end of the phrase as flat (H-L%) and others heard it as falling (L-L%). It was also the case that at least one transcriber did not hear the second "you're" as accented.