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Recording of intonation I, II; III

E. coli new...for public presentation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Es_mUvskK1M&feature=related

Health

 January 13, 2012

India Achieves Milestone in Global Polio Eradication

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius administers polio vaccine to a child in New Delhi, India, January 13, 2012..As India marks an important milestone in its fight against polio, international health experts say that it is too soon to declare victory. Mass vaccination has eradicated the crippling disease in many parts of the world. But polio transmission and sudden outbreaks remain a challenge in large regions of the Indian subcontinent, including Pakistan and Afghanistan, as well as in west and central Africa.

International reaction

To help India celebrate one year since its last reported case of polio, U.S. Health Secretary, Dr. Kathleen Sebelius, came to administer oral polio vaccine to Indian children. Health officials see the polio-free anniversary as a turning point in the global polio eradication program.

The number of polio cases reported in India dropped from 741 in 2009 to only 42 in 2010, and just one case was reported in 2011.

"What we are seeing today after 12 months without a child paralyzed by polio is that proof-positive that polio can be eradicated," said The World Health Organization’s Assistant Director-General, Dr. Bruce Aylward, who leads the group's global polio eradication program. "We can overcome the biological challenges, we can overcome the operational challenges to ensuring this disease is eradicated once and for all."

Out of list

In the coming weeks, India will be removed from the WHO's list of countries where polio is endemic, unless a new or previously unreported case emerges. Dr. Aylward says polio endemic countries can take lessons from the strategies that worked in India.

''Northern Nigeria and Pakistan are now the key to completing global eradication," said Dr. Aylward. "The challenge now, the priority now is applying the same lessons, the same ingenuity, the same innovation, the same accountability framework, the same kind of perseverance that we saw in India to get the job finished in those two countries.''

Dr. Neeraj Mistry, the managing director at the Sabin Vaccine Institute, which developed the first oral polio vaccine more than a half century ago, says India’s success against its unique public health challenge is critically important to the global eradication effort.

“In India they worked with imams to actually put out the messages - that [produced] greater local acceptance and cultural acceptance of these health interventions," said Dr. Mistry."Similarly, in other parts of the world, we can find community leaders that maybe in the form of traditional healers or even faith-based leaders in communities, that will be able to put out the messages that give greater cultural acceptance to such interventions.”

Danger

Polio, which can be prevented only by immunization, is caused by the wild polio virus, which attacks the central nervous system and can cause paralysis, muscular atrophy, and permanent deformity. It can also cause death. It infects mostly children living in unsanitary conditions. Experts say as long as even one child is infected there is a danger of others contracting the debilitating infection.

From: http://www.voanews.com/english/news/health/India-Achieves-Milestone-in-Global-Polio-Eradication-137305333.html

Intonation Home work

Intonation Patterns of English Language

Intonation is the variation in pitch while speaking - not on a word-level but on a statement-level.

By learning how native speakers use varying intonations, we can accurately understand what people try to communicate with us. As we listen closely to the melody of their speech, we can figure out their feelings, sense their moods and attitudes, and recognize questions, commands/requests and offers, ergo, properly respond to them.

We say “I beg your pardon” with a rising intonation to ask someone to repeat his statement, yet we use the falling intonation for “How may I help you?” to offer our service. When do we use these two basic intonation patterns in English?

1. Falling tune  - a pattern in which our voice falls to a low pitch by the end of a thought group or statement. We use the falling intonation in the following cases:

1. Short, complete sentences
   It's so near./It's very far.
2. In seeking information with question words such as what, when, which, who, how, etc.
   How much is this mug?/What's your name?
3. In tag questions when the speaker is sure that what he says is right
   It's a tough day, isn't it?/ It's a wonderful weather, isn't it?
4. For commands and exclamations
   Leave me alone./Give me my keys.

2. Rising tune -a pattern in which our voice rises to a high pitch by the end of a thought group or statement. We use the rising intonation in the following situations:

1. Statements intended to encourage
   That's a remarkable thought./You're doing a great job!
2. Questions answerable by 'Yes' and 'No'
   Do you want to leave?/ Did you see the giraffe?
3. Questions beginning with question words when the speaker wishes to show special interest
   Where do you live?/ What do you do for a living?
4. Tag questions when the speaker is not sure that what he says is correct
   You're sure, aren't you?/ You've checked it, haven't you?
5. Sentences ending with 'please'; for 'goodbye'; for 'thank you' when used to show gratitude for a simple matter (passing the dish, etc.)
   A cup of tea, please?/ Would you pass me that pen, please?

from: http://www.myesl.info/accent/intonation-patterns.html

11.4 Intonation The most critical aspects of nonverbal meaning are often communicated through intonation. Technically defined,intonation refers to the linguistic use of movement of pitch, but we can think of it simply as melody in speech. Intonational meaning is expressed by different pitch levels, called tones , which are connected to form tonal sequences known as contours . Intonation is rarely represented in writing. One obvious case is the opposition between a statement and a yes/no question; another is the use of italics for emphasis. In general, however, intonational features can be written down only by using special transcription systems (Crystal 1995). Our discussion of intonation is divided into two parts . First is a brief introduction to the basic intonation patterns or contours of American English. The second discusses the uses of these contours in context. 11.4.1 Basic Intonation Contours Think of some different ways that you can say the number "four." You can say "four" as an answer to a question: "Four!" The same word can function as a question all by itself: "Four?" Yet another possibility is, "If you guessed 'four,' you'reabsolutely right." These three ways of saying "four" exemplify the basic contours that characterize American English intonation patterns. There are many others, but these three are essential for prosody -sensitive concatenation. The basic contours are asfollows : Rising -falling, final (e.g., "Four!") Rising (e.g., "Four?") Rising-falling, nonfinal (e.g., "If you guessed 'four' . . .") To characterize these three contours, let's assume for simplicity only three relative levels of pitch: Level 1 is the lowest , level 2 is midrange , and level 3 is the highest. A few disclaimers are in order: These numbers are not in any way intended to represent precise pitch values. They are best regarded as ranges of possible pitches. For example, the rising-falling, nonfinal contour both starts and ends at a midpitch level, but this does not mean that it starts and ends on exactly the same melodic note. Rather, the contour starts and ends in the same relative pitch range. The intonation system proposed here is not to suggest that there are only three levels of tone. For example, a fourth tone, higher than level 3, is often used in particularly emotive discourse , but this is not relevant to the VUIs we have deployed. The inventory of contours presented here is not intended to be exhaustive. They are only the most basic ones. The contours presented here are greatly simplified and are intended to serve as abstractions. For example, there may be a number of intonational peaks in any of these contours, depending on the details of sentence -level stress placement. Rising-Falling, Final Figure 11-1 shows the default pattern for simple declarative sentences. However, like many of the patterns that follow, this particular contour has additional uses. These are relevant for concatenation and are described shortly. Figure 11-1. The rising-falling, final contour is the default pattern for simple declarative sentences. Remember that the graphical representations of intonation contours throughout this chapter are not intended for accuracy but serve only as basic sketches . These abstractions are effective in illustrating certain key aspects of intonational grammar, in particular the concept of boundary tones, which is explained shortly. The delivery of a statement as depicted in Figure 11-1 is neutral. By default, it begins at a midlevel, then rises, and then falls to a relatively low pitch. As noted earlier, the peak, which reaches level 3, predictably falls on the stressed syllable of the rightmost open -class item of the utterance—here, " VOICE mail." (The prominence peak is marked by the use ofSMALL CAPS .) Of course, because the statement peaks on " VOICE mail," it cannot serve as a response to "W HO is checking voice mail?" or "What are you DOING with your voice mail?" In these cases, the peaks would be "I" and "CHECKING ," respectively. Significantly, in English intonation structure, intonational meaning is signaled at the right edge (the end) of the utterance, and often at the right edge of smaller phrasal constituents. These tonal markers are known as boundary tones(Pierrehumbert 1980). This concept is crucial not only for proper concatenation but also for the proper recording of prompts in general. For convenience, linguists represent boundary tones by using the percent sign (%). This use of the percent sign has nothing at all to do with arithmetic; for example, "%1" means that a particular utterance or phrase ends at pitch level 1. Because the three intonation contours are distinct at their right edges and because the rising-falling, final pattern ends at pitch level 1, let's refer to this pattern as contour 1 . Rising The rising contour (Figure 11-2) is most often associated with yes/no questions. This contour also serves other functions, described later. Figure 11-2. The rising contour is often associated with yes/no questions. Like contour 1 in Figure 11-1, the rising contour starts at midlevel but ends in a high boundary tone, %3. We therefore refer to the rising pattern as contour 3 . Rising-Falling, Nonfinal This pattern corresponds to the first of the pair of clauses (the dependent or subordinate clause) in each sentence in Figure 11-3. (The second in each pair is a type 1 contour, as described earlier.) Figure 11-3. The rising-falling, nonfinal contour reflects complex sentences. The dependent clauses "as soon as Pat got home," "to speak to an operator," and "as of June twenty-third" are in the nonfinal position. There is more to follow to complete the thought, and this is signaled intonationally via a contour that does not fall as low as in the case of final phrases. Because this pattern ends at midlevel, %2, let's refer to it as contour 2. Contour 2 can sometimes be used as a nonfinal building block for longer contour 1 messages. See, for example, the concatenation plan for sentences such as "Transferring one hundred dollars from checking to savings" in Figure 11-4. Figure 11-4. You can use contour 2 in association with contour 1 messages. Ideally, this utterance would constitute a single breath group , ending at %1. To facilitate recording and concatenation, however, it may be helpful to think of Figure 11-4 as a linking of two smaller constituents: contour 2 plus contour 1. In this example, the concatenated phrase "Transferring | X dollars" could be spoken as a contour 2 pattern, whereas the phrase "from savings to checking" must be a contour 1 pattern. Later in this chapter, you will see that contour 2 is especially relevant for the concatenation of phone numbers, which begin with a kind of subordinate clause (in the case of seven-digit numbers) or with two such clauses (in the case of ten-digit numbers). 11.4.2 Contours in Context Now we turn to the use of the basic contours in context. This discussion is particularly relevant to the concatenation of messages. Lists Lists are ubiquitous in speech applications, particularly when you offer the user numerous choices, as in menu and help prompts. Depending on the nature of the application, it is sometimes desirable or even necessary to concatenate lists when the choices vary or when the length of the list itself is variable, as is often the case with dynamically generated lists. With proper planning, it is easy to make concatenated lists sound natural. This is because list items are often surroundedby a slight pause in naturally occurring discourse, especially when the delivery is slow or emphatic. Because these concatenation units are cushioned by silence, less attention is drawn to the undesirable splicing effect that generallymarks concatenation junctures. Figure 11-5 depicts default list intonation, although other list patterns are also possible. Figure 11-5. This sentence uses default list intonation. Lists consist of a series of contour 3 phrases, ending with contour 1. [4] [4] There are other, less common intonation patterns for lists. See, for example, Quirk and Greenbaum (1973). Figure 11-6 shows the concatenation plan for an error prompt that provides the caller with a list of choices. Figure 11-6. This concatenation plan helps listeners comprehend a list of choices. Note that "and sports," as well as "and rye," are best treated as a single concatenation unit. The reason is that in natural speech, this phrase is phonetically continuous, with no break between the conjunction ("and,") and the final option. Notice also the use of pauses. These correspond with naturally occurring breaks and ensure a more natural result despite concatenation. Yes/No Questions Questions that expect a response of either yes or no are called yes/no questions . In North American English, these sentences generally conform to the basic rising pattern. Concatenation items that fall at the end of such questions must therefore conform to contour 3, ending in a high tone. The example in Figure 11-7 show the concatenation plan for a prompt confirming dates—for example, "Did you say Saturday, January first?" or "Did you say Monday, May twenty-second?" Figure 11-7. This concatenation plan covers a prompt that confirms dates. The concatenated result should convey contour 3, that is, a steady rise from level 2 to 3. In addition, phrasing should reflect natural speech. When we say a date such as "Wednesday, June seventh," it is possible to pause between the day of the week and the rest, as indicated by the comma. Observing this pause during recording will facilitate natural-sounding concatenation, because the pause will coincide with the concatenation splice. In contrast, because the month and the ordinal constitute a continuous, fluid stream in natural speech, the voice actor should leave only the slightest of pauses between the month and the ordinal—only enough for the sound engineer to isolate the desired wave files, but not so much as to suggest an explicit break or sense of separation. If it is feasible , you can avoid concatenation altogether by recording all necessary yes/no possibilities for a given context, as in the prompt set in (17). (17) Did you want the home phone? Did you want the work number? Did you want the cell phone number? There is no need to concatenate such simple questions as these. Nonconcatenated prompts will sound better. Wh- Questions Wh- questions are questions that start with who, what, where, when, why , and how . They are also called information questions , because their function is to elicit information, in contrast to yes/no questions, whose function is to elicit either an affirmation, agreement, or acceptance, on the one hand, or denial, dissent, and rejection on the other. Wh- questions have two possible intonation structures, depending on the underlying intent. Usually, Wh- questions function as first-time requests for information. Figure 11-8 depicts the basic pattern for Wh- questions. Figure 11-8. The basic intonation pattern of Wh- questions is contour 1. The default intonation structure of Wh- questions is contour 1. There is, however, another possible use of Wh- questions, which is to request repetition or clarification , as when we hear "What's your name?" or "What was your name again?" (Figure 11-9). Figure 11-9. The default intonation structure of Wh- questions that ask for repetition or clarification is contour 3. The intonation of requests for repetition or clarification is contour 3, the same as for yes/no questions. The prosodic distinction between Figure 11-8 and Figure 11-9 is important for recording prompts and messages, regardless of concatenation. The function of most error prompts is to request repetition. The voice actor should therefore inflect such requests as in Figure 11-9, with contour 3, rather than as in Figure 11-8, with contour 1. Of course, if the voice actor is reading a list of prompts bereft of context and if direction is inadequate, there is little chance of capturing the appropriate prosody. As you have seen, when contrastive stress is used appropriately, the use of suitable intonation contours also gives the impression that the system possesses humanlike intelligence and is attentive to the progress of the dialog. Consider example (18). (18) C ALLER: Get a quote. S YSTEM: Who do you want a quote for? C ALLER: [utterance not recognized] S YSTEM: Sorry, who do you want a quote for? The first prompt should be contour 1 (falling), and the second prompt contour 3 (rising). In this way, the system's intonational behavior will comply with callers ' expectations based on their experience with authentic conversations. If, however, the first prompt is recorded with contour 3, then it will appear to the caller that the system misrecognized "Get a quote" as a request for a quote on a specific company but that it failed to recognize the company name, as if the caller had said "Get me a quote for Blah Blah Blah Incorporated." The caller would be justified in responding, "Hold on! I haven't said for who yet!" The appropriate use of intonation is crucial not only for instantiating a persona that possesses linguistic intelligence and attentiveness to the caller's needs, but also for making the interface comprehensible and usable. Before we move on to the next intonation pattern, let's briefly evaluate a popular but wrong idea about questions in English. It can be summed up as follows: "Whenever you see a question mark, your voice should go up." Some English teachers dispense this advice to nonnative speakers , and there are even text-to-speech engines that have been designed to uniformly impose a rising intonation contour on all sentences ending in a question mark, including Wh- questions. As you have seen in this section, however, first-time requests for Wh- information do not "go up" without coming back down, and down low. The next section describes another type of question that also ends on a low tone. Either/Or Questions Either/or questions aim to get the listener to choose one of two or more explicitly stated options rather than provide a simple yes or no. Because they function as information questions, they end on a low tone (%1), in accordance with first-time information requests, described earlier. Figure 11-10 shows an example of an either/or question. [5] [5] Of course, it is also possible to use a continuously rising pattern, but then the question in Figure 11-10 becomes a yes/no question. The answer would be "Yeah, soup" or "Yes please , salad." Figure 11-10. An either/or question ends on a low tone. Questions with more than two options, as in Figure 11-11, follow the intonation pattern typical of lists. Figure 11-11. Multiple-choice questions follow the intonation pattern of lists. The intonation patterns of simple as well as complex either/or questions can be generalized as follows: The last list item must fall to a low tone (contour 1), whereas the others must rise to a high tone (contour 3). As in the case of lists, "or" plus the final option should be recorded as a continuous chunk , without the intrusion of a concatenation splice. This pattern has other uses, such as reporting a pair of temperatures in a weather report (19). (19) . . . with a high of twenty- TWO , and a low of thir TEEN .

From: http://flylib.com/books/en/2.133.1.72/1/

What is a tag question?

A tag question is a short question added to the end of a positive or negative statement.

For example:-

He is,	isn't he?
He does,	doesn't he?
He will,	won't he?
He can,	can't he?

How are they formed?

Normally a positive statement is followed by a negative tag, and a negative statement is followed by a positive tag.

For example:-

+	-
You're English,	aren't you?
-	+
You're not German,	are you?

!The statement and the tag are always separated by a comma.

! Treat any statements with nothing, nobody etc like negative statements.

The verb in the statement should be the same tense as the verb in the tag.

For example:-

Present tense	| present tense
You are a good singer,	aren't you?
Past tense	| past tense
You didn't go to work yesterday,	did you?
Present perfect tense	| present perfect tense
You have been to London,	haven't you?

If the verb used in the statement is an auxiliary verb, then the verb used in the tag must match it. If a modal (can, could, will, should, etc.) is used in the statement, then the same modal is used in the tag part. If the statement doesn't use an auxilliary verb, then the auxiliary do is used in the tag part.

For example:-

Auxiliary verb		!Note
She is from England,	isn't she?
They aren't very nice,	are they?
She doesn't like it here,	does she?
Modal verb
You can sing,	can't you?
They shouldn't do that,	should they?
No auxiliary
He eats meat,	doesn't he?	(He does eat meat...)
He had a bath,	didn't he?	(He did have a bath...)
Nothing happened,	did it?	(Nothing did happen...)

Why do we use them?

Tag questions are used to verify or check information that we think is true or to check information that we aren't sure is true. Sometimes we just use them for effect, when we are trying to be sarcastic, or to make a strong point. So be sure to use them with care.

We show the meaning of the tag question through intonation.

If the tag is a real question it has a rising intonation.

For example:-

The chairman's coming at 3.00, isn't he?

If the tag is not a real question it has a flat or falling intonation.

For example:-

It's a nice day today, isn't it?

! It is possible for a positive statement to be followed by a positive tag for even more effect (sarcasm, anger, disbelief, shock, concern etc.).

For example:-

Oh you will, will you?

You think you're funny, do you?

from: http://www.learnenglish.de/grammar/tagquestions.htm



Sentences of yes-no question intonation patterns.

Figure 11-2. The rising contour is often associated with yes/no questions.

Sentences of Information questions intonation patterns.

Wh- Questions

Wh- questions are questions that start with who, what, where, when, why , and how . They are also called information questions , because their function is to elicit information, in contrast to yes/no questions, whose function is to elicit either an affirmation, agreement, or acceptance, on the one hand, or denial, dissent, and rejection on the other.

Wh- questions have two possible intonation structures, depending on the underlying intent. Usually, Wh- questions function as first-time requests for information. Figure 11-8 depicts the basic pattern for Wh- questions.

The default intonation structure of Wh- questions is contour 1. There is, however, another possible use of Wh- questions, which is to request repetition or clarification , as when we hear "What's your name?" or "What was your name again?"

INTONATION

24. A Festival of Books

People joke that no one in Los Angeles reads; everyone watches TV, rents videos, or goes to the movies. The most popular reading material is comic books, movie magazines, and TV guides. City libraries have only 10 percent of the traffic that car washes have. But how do you explain this? An annual book festival in west Los Angeles is “sold out” year after year. People wait half an hour for a parking space to become available.

This outdoor festival, sponsored by a newspaper, occurs every April for one weekend. This year’s attendance was estimated at 70,000 on Saturday and 75,000 on Sunday. The festival featured 280 exhibitors. There were about 90 talks given by authors, with an audience question-and-answer period following each talk. Autograph seekers sought out more than 150 authors. A food court sold all kinds of popular and ethnic foods, from American hamburgers to Hawaiian shave ice drinks. Except for a $7 parking fee, the festival was free. Even so, some people avoided the food court prices by sneaking in their own sandwiches and drinks.

People came from all over California. One couple drove down from San Francisco. “This is our sixth year here now. We love it,” said the husband. “It’s just fantastic to be in the great outdoors, to be among so many books and authors, and to get some very good deals, too.”

The idea for the festival occurred years ago, but nobody knew if it would succeed. Although book festivals were already popular in other US cities, would Los Angeles residents embrace one? “Angelenos are very unpredictable,” said one of the festival founders.