ISCA Archive Eurospeech 1997
ISCA Archive Eurospeech 1997

Automatic recognition of sentence type from prosody in dutch

Vincent J. van Heuven, Judith Haan, Jos J.A. Pacilly

This paper investigates to what extent statements, Wh-questions, Yes/No-questions and declarative questions in Dutch can be automatically discriminated on the basis of global and local F0-parameters. Global parameters were the slope and mean pitch of upper and lower trend lines that were fitted through F0-curves; local parameters were onset and offset F0 of a terminal question-marking pitch rise. Results indicate that women mark the interrogative status of a sentence more often and perceptually more saliently. Generally, global downtrend parameters are better predictors of sentence type than parameters of the final rise.