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Prosodic Features of Verbal Irony in Russian and French: Universal vs. Language-Specific

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Speech and Computer (SPECOM 2022)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 13721))

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Abstract

This study investigates acoustic features of irony in Russian and French languages. Two series of experiments were conducted. First, homonymous ironic and non-ironic stimuli were read by two native French speakers (man and woman) and two native Russian speakers (man and woman) and then presented for perceptual evaluation. Acoustic and statistical analysis of the reliably recognized stimuli (correctly defined by more than 60% of listeners) showed that acoustic characteristics differ significantly in ironic and non-ironic phrases in both French and Russian. Changes in the speech rate, increase of the stressed vowel and syllable duration, as well as the intensity level and average pitch augmentation were used by both Russian and French speakers while expressing irony. In order to verify these observations various modifications of the original stimuli were carried out. Second series of listening perceptual experiments with the modified stimuli showed the role of various prosodic parameters and their combinations in irony perception in two languages.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the RFBR grant No 20–012-00552 and by the grant of Saint Petersburg State University, ID 97183094.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Saint Petersburg State University, Saint Petersburg, 199034, Russia

    Uliana Kochetkova, Pavel Skrelin, Rada German & Daria Novoselova

Authors
  1. Uliana Kochetkova
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  2. Pavel Skrelin
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  3. Rada German
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  4. Daria Novoselova
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Uliana Kochetkova .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Indian Institute of Technology Dharwad, Dharwad, India

    S. R. Mahadeva Prasanna

  2. St. Petersburg Federal Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia

    Alexey Karpov

  3. Koneru Lakshmaiah Education Foundation, Vaddeswaram, India

    K. Samudravijaya

  4. KIIT Group of Colleges, Gurugram, India

    Shyam S. Agrawal

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Kochetkova, U., Skrelin, P., German, R., Novoselova, D. (2022). Prosodic Features of Verbal Irony in Russian and French: Universal vs. Language-Specific. In: Prasanna, S.R.M., Karpov, A., Samudravijaya, K., Agrawal, S.S. (eds) Speech and Computer. SPECOM 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 13721. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20980-2_31

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20980-2_31

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-20979-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-20980-2

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