The common prosody platform (CPP) — where theories of prosody can be directly compared

This paper introduces the Common Prosody Platform (CPP), a computational platform that implements major theories and models of prosody. CPP aims at a) adapting theory-specific assumptions into computational algorithms that can generate surface prosodic forms, and b) making all the models trainable through global optimization based on automatic analysis-bysynthesis learning. CPP allows examination of prosody in much finer detail than has been previously done and provides a means for speech scientists to directly compare theories and their models. So far, four theories have been included in the platform, the Command-Response model, the Autosegmental-Metrical theory, the Task Dynamic model, and the Parallel Encoding and Target Approximation model. Preliminary tests show that all the implemented models can achieve good local contour fitting with low errors and high correlations.