Timing restrictions on prosodic phrasing

• Prosodic evidence for the existence of isochronal 2-2.5 sec speech production units is presented. Factors such as F0-declination patterns defined over these 2-2.5 sec. units, as well as boundary tones at the edges of these assumed planning units give support to the idea that prosodic structure serves as an important planning framework for an utterance. The findings provide support for the assumption of a ’Prosodic Planning Hypothesis’ such as that proposed by Shattuck-Hufnagel and Turk (1996) and Shattuck-Hufnagel (2000: 222), who assume that an utterance-specific frame ‘‘independent of its contents plays a role in production processing, and prosodic structure is a natural candidate for this structural frame’’. Similar ideas have also been presented by Wheeldon and Lahiri (1997: 377) who claim that ‘‘articulation is preceded by the generation of an abstract prosodic representation of an utterance’’. Breathing is assumed to play an important role in delimitation of the production units: Inspirations only occur at edges and can thus function as anchors for the grouping of speech into 2-2.5 sec speech chunks. Local prosodic information (pauses, boundary tones (H%/L%) and the timing restriction, can be used to make a further segmentation of spontaneous speech into 2-2.5 sec production units. The existence of such a timing restriction on speech planning can be used in the design of algorithms for the automatic segmentation of speech.

Subject headings

HUMANIORA  -- Språk och litteratur -- Jämförande språkvetenskap och allmän lingvistik (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature -- General Language Studies and Linguistics (hsv//eng)

Keyword

pauses

timing

prosody

phrasing

Publication and Content Type

kon (subject category)

ref (subject category)