Prosody Visualization Challenge 2023 (PVC-2023)

Visualizing prosody today: language contact, increased global mobility and multilingual speech communities

Organizers
Olga Maxwell (University of Melbourne), Debbie Loakes (University of Melbourne), Katie Jepson (Institute of Phonetics and Speech Processing, LMU Munich)

Background
Prosody Visualization Challenge 2023 (PVC-2023) is the third event in the series following the success of the first and second challenges (SPro2018 and ICPhS 2019). It was first introduced by the late Professor Anne Cutler at the SPro2018. We would like to continue this important initiative honouring Professor Cutler’s extensive body of work on prosody. The main aims of the challenge are to bring together researchers working on various aspects of prosody and to show and share diverse approaches to prosody visualization. PVC-2023 aligns with the Congress’ theme “Intermingling Communities and Changing Cultures”, and particularly focuses on visualization results related to the study of prosody in the context of language contact, increased global mobility and multilingual speech communities. To date, a number of diverse approaches and systems to capture prosody are available. However, these are often hard for outsiders to interpret without any prior knowledge, and at times, even for those who specialise in the study of prosody. Also, direct comparisons showing similarities and differences, advances and limitations between the systems are not always available. In addition, many existing systems focus on phenomena related to intonation (f0 contour and f0 range, prominences, prosodic structure, etc.) and may not capture both timing characteristics and intonational properties of a language in a single system, or have been developed through extensive work on European languages (such as English), with a limited application to less documented languages. PVC-2023 invites all to bring their systems of prosody visualization for a comparative display. This helps everyone to know what systems are available and how they compare when looking at prosodic variation across languages and dialects. Participants can present their visualization approach using data from any language(s) they choose.

Session Format
• The challenge will be held in the format of a special poster session as part of the ICPhS 2023.
• The audience will be able to interact with the presenters of each poster. The winner of the challenge will be chosen by votes cast by the Congress attendees and will be announced at the closing ceremony.

Challenge guidelines
• Entries must be anonymous
• To take part in the challenge, please submit an abstract (not more then 150 words), full paper (not more that 2 pages) and a title. Submit it please via the ICPhS submission portal: https://icphs2023.confea.net/en/user-zone
• Please note, the deadline for submission is April 10, 2023.
• Each accepted entry will be presented via an illustrative poster, as well as a set of analysed examples in a digital form, available on a laptop at the time of poster session.
• There is no associated requirement for a paper in the proceedings, nor is there a novelty requirement for the presentation system. (In contrast: existing descriptions of the system used – in a journal article, conference proceedings, technical report, or website – will increase the likelihood of a challenge submission being accepted!)
At least one author of the submission must be listed as an author on another paper and be registered for the Congress
• Entrants may base their analysis on any languages/language varieties they are working on. The challenge is to select a good set of samples in which your visualization system best captures the contrasts/similarities across languages and language varieties, and to explain in your poster how these can be seen. There is thus no common audio requirement - use your own audio!
• Please submit your sample recordings with your abstract (alternatively, share a link to the recordings via an online platform). Please also include below your abstract a statement to certify that you have appropriate ethics permission from the speakers in the recordings to use them for this purpose. Note the recordings will be available for people attending the Congress to listen to during the poster session.

If you have any questions or would like more information, please get in touch:
omaxwell@unimelb.edu.au
dloakes@unimelb.edu.au
k.jepson@phonetik.uni-muenchen.de

(CET timezone)