Intonation in German Speech with Different Emotions

This study focused on how pitch contours in German speech correlate with different emotions of the speaker, because intonation contributes not only to communicating certain information but also to expressing a speaker’s emotions. It is obvious that speakers express their emotions with the proper intonation well integrated into their speech. A total of 324 samples were extracted from two films and were read aloud by two female native speakers. The samples were analyzed in terms of nine emotions: anger, indifference, discontent, surprise, expectation, enforcement, contentment, confidence, and risible irony. The analysis of all the pitch contours reveals that those samples with certain emotion display characteristic intonation patterns such as a wide pitch range, a narrow pitch range and a high pitch peak. For example, when uttered with anger or discontent, the utterances have a remarkable tendency toward a wide pitch range and a high pitch peak; on the contrary, when uttered with enforcement, they have a barely unified tendency. However, both of the speakers tend to use different pitch patterns in each emotion category. This finding does not mean that the functions of intonation of each speaker show a lack of order. Instead, a proportionally realized voice with intonation due to sentences spoken with any emotion stands in a natural appearance of similarity on the one hand, and difference on the other. The important point is that a certain intonation is realized under the joint influence of the three factors of grammar, sound, and personality. What is then required is to verify the intonation dynamics which are articulate by German native speakers according to various emotions