Esther Grabe
Reader in Phonetics
Oxford University Phonetics Laboratory
41 Wellington Square
University of Oxford
Oxford OX1 2JF
Great Britain
+44 1865 270446
E-mail
Research
My research interests include cross-dialectal and
cross-linguistic variation in the melody and rhythm of speech ('prosody')
and the role of prosody in speech comprehension. I do experimental work, in the framework of Laboratory Phonology.
Between 1998 and March 2002, I directed an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)
project entitled Intonation
in the British Isles (IViE) which was held in the Department of Linguistics
at the Unversity of Cambridge. During the time of the project, we set up the IViE corpus. The corpus is now held at the University of Oxford and can be downloaded from the web. It contains speech data from seven dialects of English in five speaking styles (phonetically controlled read sentences, a read fairy tale, a retold version of the fairy tale, a map task and free conversation). We recorded data from 12 speakers per dialect (6 male, 6 female). All speakers were adolescents at the time. For all research purposes, the corpus is available free of charge.
Since May 2003, I have been directing a follow-up
project, also funded by the ESRC, together with John Coleman. The title of the project is A Quantitative
Model of Intonational Variation in the British Isles
. The project proposal
is available here (postscript). And here's a short
summary of the research we'll be doing. The acronym for the project is
OXIGEN - the
OXford Intonation
GENerator. Papers from the project are listed in the publications section below.
In addition, I'm involved in two exploratory projects which are held in our lab (with John Coleman, Greg Kochanski and Burton Rosner). One involves an investigation of intonation mimicry; in the other, we've been looking at the physiology of intonation in whispered speech. The first project has been funded by Oxford University, the second by the British Academy.
In the past, I have been involved in work on speech rhythm with Ee
Ling Low, Francis Nolan and David Deterding. We have
developed an acoustic measure for rhythm, the PVI (Pairwise Variability
Index). The PVI provides an acoustic basis for a weak categorical distinction
between so-called stress- and syllable-timed languages (e.g. Dutch, English
and German vs. French and Spanish). But the data also show that there
are languages which do not fit into the stress-timed or the syllable-timed
group, at least as far as PVI values are concerned. If you would like to calculate PVI values for your own speech data,
you can download this
MS-Excel worksheet. The worksheet contains
the formula. All you have to do is enter your own measurement values.
The work for my doctoral dissertation was carried out at the Max-Planck-Institute for
Psycholinguistics and at the University of Nijmegen under the supervision of Anne Cutler
and Carlos Gussenhoven. My thesis can be
downloaded
from the web.
Other professional activities
Between 2002 and 2005, I worked as a scientific coordinator on a
European Science Foundation Network. The Network was called
Tone and
Intonation in
Europe (TIE), and was chaired by Carlos Gussenhoven. The funding period ended early this year. The other
coordinators were Amalia Arvaniti (San Diego), Gorka Elordieta (Vittoria),
Sonia Frota (Lisbon),
Aditi Lahiri (Konstanz), Tomas Riad (Stockholm) and Norval Smith (Amsterdam).
For information on the Network, click
here. Since 2002, we've held workshops in
Konstanz in Germany, in
Oxford in the UK
and in
Cascais in Portugal.
A final conference organised by the network has taken place in
Santorini in Greece in September 2004. A volume with publications from the meeting will appear in due course.
I teach general phonetics, experimental phonetics and phonology and I have supervised undergraduate and PhD students (but I'm not a member of the teaching staff; I hold a research position). Finally, I am a regular reviewer for a number of journals and for the UK Research Councils.
Family
I am married to Ian Watson. We live in Oxford with our daughter
Lucy
(*27/03/1999) and our son
Niklas
(*11/09/2002).
Publications
To appear
Kochanski, G., Grabe, E., Coleman, J. and Rosner, B. (accepted). Loudness predicts prominence; fundamental frequency lends little.
PDF.
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.
Grabe, E., Kochanski, G. and Coleman, J. (accepted). The intonation of native accent varieties in the British Isles - potential for miscommunication?
PDF.
To appear in Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kolaczyk and Joanna Przedlacka (eds.), English pronunciation models: a changing scene. Linguistic Insights Series, Peter Lang.
2004
Fletcher, J., Grabe, E., and Warren, P. (2004). Intonational variation in four dialects
of English: the high rising tune. In Sun-Ah Jun (ed.)
Prosodic
typology. The Phonology of Intonation and Phrasing. Oxford,
OUP.
Grabe, E. (2004). Intonational variation in urban dialects of English spoken in the
British Isles.
PDF.
In Gilles, P. and Peters, J. (eds.) Regional Variation in Intonation. Linguistische Arbeiten, Tuebingen, Niemeyer, pp. 9-31.
Kochanski, G., Grabe, E. and Coleman, J. (2004). JASA Abstract: The difference between a question and a statement: a survey of English dialects. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 115(5), p. 2398.
Rosner, B., Grabe, E., Nicholson, H., Owen, K. and Keane, E. (2004), Memory Load and Memory for Speech.
PDF.
In Oxford University Working Papers in Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics.
2003
Grabe, E., Rosner, B., Garcia-Albea, J.E. and Zhou, X. (2003).
Perception of English Intonation by English, Spanish and Chinese Listeners.
Language and Speech 46 (4), 375-401.
Grabe, E. and Karpinski, M. (2003). Universal and language-specific aspects
of intonation in English and Polish.
PDF.
In Proceedings of the 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 3-9 August, Barcelona, Vol.1, 1061-1064.
Grabe, E., Rosner, B., Garcia-Albea, J.E. and Zhou, X. (2003)
Perception of English Intonation by English, Spanish and Chinese listeners.
In Proceedings of the 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 3-9 August, Barcelona, Vol.1, 763-769.
Grabe, E., Kochanski, G. and Coleman, J. (2003). Quantitative modelling of intonational Variation.
PDF.
Proceedings of Speech Analysis and Recognition in Technology, Linguistics and Medicine 2003. (NB. This work was presented in 2003 and the written paper was accepted in the same year. The publication of the volume has been delayed and at present, it is unclear whether the publication will be 2003 or 2005).
2002
Grabe, E. and Low, E.L. (2002)
.doc Durational Variability in Speech
and the Rhythm Class Hypothesis. Papers in Laboratory Phonology 7,
Mouton.
Grabe, E. (2002)
.doc
Variation adds to prosodic typology.
In B.Bel and I. Marlin (eds),
Proceedings
of the Speech Prosody 2002 Conference, 11-13 April 2002, Aix-en-Provence: Laboratoire Parole
et Langage, 127-132. ISBN 2-9518233-0-4.
Grabe, E. and Post, B. (2002)
.doc
Intonational Variation in English. In B.Bel and I. Marlin (eds),
Proceedings
of the Speech Prosody 2002 Conference, 11-13 April 2002, Aix-en-Provence: Laboratoire Parole
et Langage, 343-346. ISBN 2-9518233-0-4.
Eriksson, A., Grabe, E., and Traunmueller, H. (2002). Perception of syllable prominence
by listeners with and without competence in the tested language.
In B.Bel and I. Marlin (eds),
Proceedings
of the Speech Prosody 2002 Conference, 11-13 April 2002, Aix-en-Provence: Laboratoire Parole
et Langage, 275-278. ISBN 2-9518233-0-4.
2001
Grabe, E., Post, B. and Nolan, F. (2001)
.doc
Modelling intonational Variation in English. The IViE system.
In Puppel, S. and Demenko, G. (eds). Proceedings of Prosody 2000, 51-57,
Adam Mickiewitz University, Poznan, Poland.
Low, E.L., Grabe, E. and Nolan, F. (2001). Quantitative characterisations of
speech rhythm: Syllable-timing in Singapore English. Language and Speech
43 (4), 377-401.
2000
Grabe, E., Post, B., Nolan, F., and Farrar, K. (2000). Pitch accent
realisation in four varieties of British English. Journal of Phonetics
28.
1999
Low, E.L. and Grabe, E. (1999). A contrastive study of prosody and lexical
stress placement in Singapore English and British English. Language
and Speech 42 (1).
Grabe, E., Post, B., and Watson, I. (1999)
.doc The acquisition of rhythmic patterns in English and
French. Proceedings of the International Congress of Phonetic Sciences,
San Francisco, August, 1999.
Rietveld, T., Wichman, A., Gussenhoven, C., and Grabe, E. (1999). The
differential perceptual effect of the L*H pitch accent in British English
and Dutch. Proceedings of the Tutorial and Research Workshop on Dialogue
and Prosody. Eindhoven, The Netherlands, September 1-3, 1999.
Grabe, E., Gut, U., Post, B. and Watson, I. (1999). The Acquisition of Rhythm in
English, French and German. Current Research in Language and Communication:
Proceedings of the Child Language Seminar 1999, London, City University.
1998
Grabe, E. (1998a)
.doc Comparative Intonational Phonology: English and
German. MPI Series in Psycholinguistics 7, Wageningen, Ponsen en Looien.
Grabe, E. (1998b). Pitch accent realisation in English and German. Journal
of Phonetics 26, 129-144.
Grabe, E. Gussenhoven, C., Haan, J., Marsi, E., and Post, B. (1998).
Preaccentual pitch and speaker attitude in Dutch. Language and Speech
41 (1).
Grabe, E., Nolan, F., and Farrar, K. (1998). IViE - A comparative transcription
system for intonational variation in English. Proceedings of ICSLP 98,
Sydney, Australia.
1997
Grabe, E. Comparative Intonation Analysis: English and German (1997).
In Proceedings of the ESCA Workshop on Intonation: Theory, Models and
Applications, Athens, Greece.
Nolan, F., and Grabe, E. (1997). Can ToBI transcribe intonational variation
in English? In Proceedings of the ESCA Workshop on Intonation: Theory,
Models and Applications, Athens, Greece.
1995
Grabe, E. and Warren, P. (1995). Stress Shift: do speakers do it or
do listeners use it? In B. Connell and A. Arvaniti (eds.), Papers in
Laboratory Phonology IV. Phonology and Phonetic Evidence. Cambridge:
CUP.
Low, E. and Grabe, E. (1995). Prosodic patterns in Singapore English.
In Proceedings of the XIIIth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences,
Stockholm, Vol 3, 636-639.
Warren, P., Nolan, F., Grabe, E. and Holst, T. (1995). Post-lexical
and prosodic phonological processing. Language and Cognitive Processes
10.
Warren, P., Grabe, E. and Nolan, F. (1995). Prosody, phonology and closure
ambiguities. Language and Cognitive Processes 10.
1994
Grabe, E., Warren, P. and Nolan, F. (1994). Resolving category ambiguities
- evidence from stress shift. Speech Communication 15.
Page designed and maintained by Esther
Grabe
Last modified on 22/06/2005