Gilbert Ambrazaitis

Gilbert Ambrazaitis is a senior lecturer in Swedish as a second language with a background in Phonetics (M.A. in Phonetics and digital speech processing, 2004; PhD in Phonetics, 2010).

He is associated with the Linnaeus University Centre for Intermedial and Multimodal Studies (IMS) and with the Educational Linguistics research group. He is also currently leading an externally funded project (Riksbankens Jubileumsfond), and is involved in another ongoing externally funded project at KTH, Stockholm (Swedish Research Council).

Gilbert's work has a strong focus on basic research in Phonetics, concentrating mainly on prosody - the melody and rhythm of speech. His current research is specializing on the multimodal nature of prosody on the one hand (i.e. the interaction between voice and bodily movements) and on children's acquisition of contrastive intonation on the other hand.

Gilbert teaches Phonetics and pronunciation teaching at basic level in Swedish as a second language. He also supervises at basic and advanced level.

My research groups

My ongoing research projects

Publications

Selected publications

Nabrotzky, J., Ambrazaitis, G., Zellers, M., House, D. (2023). Can segmental or syllabic durations be predicted by the presence of co-speech gestures?. Proceedings of the 20th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. 4185-4189.
Ambrazaitis, G., Althaus, N., Bertilsson, C., Löhndorf, S., Romøren, A.S.H., et al. (2023). Do dialect-specific prosodic properties shape the path to contrastive focus? - Production and comprehension data from 3-5 year-old children acquiring Stockholm or Scania Swedish.
Ambrazaitis, G., House, D. (2022). Probing effects of lexical prosody on speech-gesture integration in prominence production by Swedish news presenters. Laboratory Phonology. 24 (1). 1-35.
Status: Published
Svensson Lundmark, M., Frid, J., Ambrazaitis, G., Schötz, S. (2021). Word-initial consonant–vowel coordination in a lexical pitch-accent language. Phonetica. 78 (5-6). 515-569.
Status: Published

Article in journal (Refereed)

Ambrazaitis, G., House, D. (2022). Probing effects of lexical prosody on speech-gesture integration in prominence production by Swedish news presenters. Laboratory Phonology. 24 (1). 1-35.
Status: Published
Svensson Lundmark, M., Frid, J., Ambrazaitis, G., Schötz, S. (2021). Word-initial consonant–vowel coordination in a lexical pitch-accent language. Phonetica. 78 (5-6). 515-569.
Status: Published
Ambrazaitis, G., House, D. (2017). Multimodal prominences : Exploring the patterning and usage of focal pitch accents, head beats and eyebrow beats in Swedish television news readings. Speech Communication. 95. 100-113.
Status: Published
Ambrazaitis, G. (2005). Between Fall and Fall-Rise : Substance-Function Relations in German Phrase-Final Intonation Contours. Phonetica. 62. 196-214.
Status: Published

Book (Refereed)

Carling, G., Lindell, L., Ambrazaitis, G. (2014). Scandoromani : remnants of a mixed language. Brill Academic Publishers.

Chapter in book (Refereed)

Ambrazaitis, G., Carling, G. (2014). The sounds of a mixed language. Scandoromani : Remnants of a Mixed Language. Leiden & Boston, Brill Academic Publishers. 24-63.
Ambrazaitis, G., Frid, J., Bruce, G. (2012). Revisiting South and Central Swedish intonation from a comparative and functional perspective. Understanding Prosody : The role of context, function and communication. Berlin & Boston, Walter de Gruyter. 135-158.

Chapter in book (Other (popular science, discussion, etc.))

Ambrazaitis, G., Tronnier, M. (2013). Talets Atomer. Språket, människan och världen : Människans språk 1-2. Lund, Studentlitteratur AB. 125-164.

Conference paper (Refereed)

Ambrazaitis, G., Althaus, N., Bertilsson, C., Löhndorf, S., Romøren, A.S.H., et al. (2023). Produktion och perception av kontrastiv fokus hos 3- till 5-åriga barn från Stockholm och Skåne.
Ambrazaitis, G., Frid, J., House, D. (2023). Web-based, audio-visual prominence ratings of Swedish news reading materials: Effects of head movements, rating condition, and hardware. .
Nabrotzky, J., Ambrazaitis, G., Zellers, M., House, D. (2023). Temporal alignment of manual gestures’ phase transitions with lexical and postlexical accentual F0 peaks in spontaneous Swedish interaction. Proceedings of Gesture and Speech in Interaction (GESPIN 2023).
Nabrotzky, J., Ambrazaitis, G., Zellers, M., House, D. (2023). Can segmental or syllabic durations be predicted by the presence of co-speech gestures?. Proceedings of the 20th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. 4185-4189.
Ambrazaitis, G., Althaus, N., Bertilsson, C., Löhndorf, S., Romøren, A.S.H., et al. (2023). Contrastive focus production and perception in 3-5 year-old Swedish children from two regional varieties with and without categorical intonational marking of focus.
Ambrazaitis, G., Althaus, N., Bertilsson, C., Löhndorf, S., Romøren, A.S.H., et al. (2023). Do dialect-specific prosodic properties shape the path to contrastive focus? - Production and comprehension data from 3-5 year-old children acquiring Stockholm or Scania Swedish.
Ambrazaitis, G., Frid, J., House, D. (2022). Auditory vs. audiovisual prominence ratings of speech involving spontaneously produced head movements. Proceedings of the International Conference on Speech Prosody 2022. 352-356.
Ambrazaitis, G., Tronnier, M. (2021). Is duration a (true) correlate of the Swedish word accents?. Fonologi i Norden : Abstract Booklet, FiNo 2021. 2-2.
Ambrazaitis, G., Althaus, N., Löhndorf, S., Romøren, A.S.H., Sayehli, S. (2021). Variability in (the absence of) post-focal de-accentuation in South Swedish.
Ambrazaitis, G., Frid, J., House, D. (2021). Towards understanding the multimodality of prominence production and perception. 4th Phonetics and Phonology in Europe, Phonetics and Phonology: Real-world applications, 21-23 June 2021 : Book of Abstracts. 78-79.
Ambrazaitis, G., Frid, J., House, D. (2020). Word prominence ratings in Swedish television news readings : effects of pitch accents and head movements. Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Speech Prosody : 25-28 May 2020, Tokyo, Japan. 314-318.
Ambrazaitis, G., Zellers, M., House, D. (2020). Compounds in interaction : patterns of synchronization between manual gestures and lexically stressed syllables in spontaneous Swedish. Proceedings of Gesture and Speech in Interaction (GESPIN2020).
Romøren, A.S.H., Althaus, N., Sayehli, S., Ambrazaitis, G. (2019). Acquiring contrastive intonation in two varieties of Swedish.
Ambrazaitis, G., House, D. (2019). Is phonetic prominence underlyingly multimodal?. Phonetics and Phonology in Europe 2019 satellite workshop : Prominence between cognitive functions and linguistic structures (CoFLiS).
Ambrazaitis, G., Frid, J., House, D. (2019). Multimodal prominence ratings : Effects of screen size and audio device. Book of Abstracts MMSYM 2019. 2-3.
Frid, J., Svensson Lundmark, M., Ambrazaitis, G., House, D. (2019). EMA-based head movements, word accent and vowel length. Book of Abstracts MMSYM 2019. 11-11.
Frid, J., Svensson Lundmark, M., Ambrazaitis, G., Schötz, S., House, D. (2019). Investigating visual prosody using articulography. Proceedings of the Digital Humanities in the Nordic Countries 4th Conference : Copenhagen, Denmark, March 5-8, 2019. 143-148.
Ambrazaitis, G., House, D. (2019). Multimodality in prominence production and its sensitivity for lexical prosody. Abstract booklet : PaPE, Lecce, 17-19 June 2019. 121-122.
Ambrazaitis, G., House, D. (2018). Phonetic realization of Swedish complex pitch accents as a function of accompanying head and eyebrow movements. .
House, D., Ambrazaitis, G. (2018). Prominence, prosody and the functions of head and eyebrow movement in newsreading and spontaneous dialogue. ISGS - 8th International Conference - Book of Abstracts. 94-94.
Kelterer, A., Ambrazaitis, G., House, D. (2018). Head beats as pitch-accompanying visual correlates of primary and secondary lexical stress : Evidence from Stockholm Swedish compounds. Proc. TAL2018, Sixth International Symposium on Tonal Aspects of Languages. 124-128.
Svensson Lundmark, M., Ambrazaitis, G., Ewald, O. (2017). Exploring multidimensionality : acoustic and articulatory correlates of Swedish word accents. Interspeech 2017 : 20-24 August 2017, Stockholm. 3236-3240.
Ambrazaitis, G., House, D. (2017). Multimodal prominences : How eyebrow and head beats are combined with pitch accents to encode information structure in Swedish news readings. The 6th conference of the Scandinavian Association for Language and Cognition : Book of abstracts. 21-22.
Ambrazaitis, G., House, D. (2017). Acoustic features of multimodal prominences: Do visual beat gestures affect verbal pitch accent realization?. The 14th International Conference on Auditory-Visual Speech Processing (AVSP2017).
Frid, J., Ambrazaitis, G., Svensson Lundmark, M., House, D. (2017). Towards classification of head movements in audiovisual recordings of read news. Proceedings of the 4th European and 7th Nordic Symposium on Multimodal Communication (MMSYM 2016) : Copenhagen, 29-30 September 2016. 4-9.
Ambrazaitis, G., House, D. (2016). Multimodal levels of prominence : the use of eyebrows and head beats to convey information structure in Swedish news reading. ISGS Conference 2016. Gesture, Creativity, Multimodality : Book of abstracts. 319-319.
Ambrazaitis, G., Karlsson, A. (2016). The prosody of topics in two varieties of Swedish : Effects of contrast and referential status. Presented at TIE2016, the 7th Conference on Tone and Intonation in Europe : Canterbury, UK, September 1-3, 2016.
Ambrazaitis, G., Svensson Lundmark, M., House, D. (2015). Head beats and eyebrow movements as a function of phonological prominence levels and word accents in Stockholm Swedish news broadcasts. Presented at MMSYM 2015, The 3rd European Symposium on Multimodal Communication : Dublin, Ireland, September 17-18, 2015.
Ambrazaitis, G., Svensson Lundmark, M., House, D. (2015). Head Movements, Eyebrows, and Phonological Prosodic Prominence Levels in Stockholm Swedish News Broadcasts. FAAVSP 2015. The 1st Joint Conference on Facial Analysis, Animation, and Auditory-Visual Speech Processing : Kardinal König Haus, 11 – 13 September 2015, Vienna, Austria. 42-42.
Ambrazaitis, G., Buanzur, T.C., Niebuhr, O. (2015). Focal F0 peak shape and sentence mode in Swedish. Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences.
Ambrazaitis, G., Frid, J. (2014). F₀ peak timing, height, and shape as independent features. TAL 2014. The 4^th International Symposium on Tonal Aspects of Languages : Nijmegen, The Netherlands, May 13-16, 2014. 138-142.
Ambrazaitis, G. (2010). Revisiting intonational pitch accents in Swedish : Evidence from lexical accent neutralization. Presented at TIE4. The Fourth European Conference on Tone and Intonation : September 9-11, 2010. Stockholm University, Campus Frescati. 69-70.
Ambrazaitis, G., Niebuhr, O. (2008). Dip and hat pattern : a phonological contrast of German?. Speech Prosody 2008, Fourth International Conference : Campinas, Brazil, May 6-9, 2008. 269-272.
Ambrazaitis, G. (2007). Expressing 'confirmation' in Swedish : The interplay of word and utterance prosody. Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. 1093-1096.

Conference paper (Other academic)

Ambrazaitis, G., Althaus, N., Bertilsson, C., Löhndorf, S., Romøren, A.S.H., et al. (2023). Språkutveckling och prosodisk typologi: Produktion och perception av den dialektspecifika fokusmarkeringen hos 3- till 5-åriga barn från Stockholm och Skåne.
House, D., Ambrazaitis, G. (2022). The multimodal nature of prominence. 13th Nordic Prosody Conference - Book of Abstracts. 8-10.
Ambrazaitis, G., House, D. (2021). The role of head and eyebrow movements for the production and perception of prosodic prominence: Evidence from Swedish news readings and spontaneous dialogue. .
Ambrazaitis, G., Frid, J., House, D. (2021). Perceiving head movements in news readings : Evidence from web-based auditory vs. audiovisual prominence ratings. Working Papers 56. 2021 : Proceedings of Fonetik 2021, Lund, June 8–9, 2021. 36-41.
Ambrazaitis, G., Tronnier, M. (2021). Segmental durations as a correlate of Swedish word accents : Evidence from Stockholm and Scania Swedish. Working Papers 56. 2021 : Proceedings of Fonetik 2021, Lund, June 8–9, 2021. 13-16.
Frid, J., Svensson Lundmark, M., Ambrazaitis, G., House, D. (2019). EMA-based head movements, word accents, vowel length and segments : a preliminary study. Proceedings from FONETIK 2019 Stockholm, June 10-12, 2019. 125-126.
Ambrazaitis, G., House, D. (2018). Accentual falls and rises vary as a function of accompanying head and eyebrow movements. Proceedings FONETIK 2018 : The XXXth Swedish Phonetics Conference. 5-7.
Frid, J., Svensson Lundmark, M., Ambrazaitis, G., Schötz, S., House, D. (2018). EMA-based head movements and phrasing: a preliminary study. Proceedings FONETIK 2018 : The XXXth Swedish Phonetics Conference. 17-20.
Ambrazaitis, G., Svensson Lundmark, M., House, D. (2015). Multimodal levels of prominence : A preliminary analysis of head and eyebrow movements in Swedish news broadcasts. Proceedings from Fonetik 2015 : Lund, June 8–10, 2015. 11-16.
Botinis, A., Ambrazaitis, G., Frid, J. (2014). Syllable structure and tonal representation : Revisiting focal Accent II in Swedish. Proceedings from FONETIK 2014. Stockholm, June 9-11, 2014 : PERILUS XXIV, June 2014. 65-70.
Ambrazaitis, G., Frid, J. (2013). On the Intonation of Confirmations in Southern Swedish. Nordic Prosody : Proceedings of the XIth Conference, Tartu 2012. 87-96.
Ambrazaitis, G., Frid, J. (2012). The prosody of contrastive topics in Southern Swedish. Proceedings from FONETIK 2012. 1-4.
Frid, J., Ambrazaitis, G. (2010). Automatic estimation of pitch range through distribution fitting. Proceedings from FONETIK 2010. 41-46.

Conference proceedings (editor) (Other academic)

Svensson Lundmark, M., Ambrazaitis, G., Van De Weijer, J. (2015). Proceedings from Fonetik 2015 : Lund, June 8–10, 2015. Lund, Centre for Languages and Literature, Lund University. 106.