THE PERCEPTUAL PROMINENCE OF FUNDAMENTAL-FREQUENCY PEAKS

Five perception experiments were conducted that investigated how the p erceived prominence of F0 maxima in accented syllables in Dutch is aff ected by the variation of F0 minima that is supposed to relate to vari ation in global pitch range. The purpose of the first two experiments was to test the predictions of a model in which the reference line is directly given by an interpolation between observable F0 minima. The r esults showed that the model was inadequate, and confirmed earlier res earch suggesting that the reference line is calculated in a less direc t way. The next three experiments investigated the role of the F0 of t he unaccented portions of speech at the beginning (''onset'') and at t he end (''offset'') of the contour, and show that only the (low) onset is used to calibrate the reference line. The results also suggest tha t longer onsets affect the abstract reference more than do shorter ons ets. (C) 1997 Acoustical Society of America.