Timing restrictions on prosodic phrasing
Author
Editor
- Gösta Bruce
- Merle Horne
Summary, in English
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.
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.
Department/s
Publishing year
2006
Language
English
Pages
117-126
Publication/Series
Nordic Prosody IX
Full text
Document type
Conference paper
Publisher
Peter Lang Publishing Group
Topic
- General Language Studies and Linguistics
Keywords
- pauses
- timing
- prosody
- phrasing
Conference name
Nordic Prosody, 2004
Conference date
2004-08-08 - 2004-08-10
Conference place
Lund, Sweden
Status
Published
Project
- The role of function words in spontaneous speech processing
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISBN: 0-2804-7709-5