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