Prosodic boundary strength: An articulatory and perceptual study

Abstract

This study examines the production and perception of Intonational Phrase (IP) boundaries. In particular, it investigates (1) whether the articulatory events that occur at IP boundaries can exhibit temporal distinctions that would indicate a difference in degree of disjuncture, and (2) to what extent listeners are sensitive to the effects of such differences among IP boundaries. Two experiments investigate these questions. An articulatory kinematic experiment examines the effects of structural differences between IP boundaries on the production of those boundaries. In a perception experiment listeners then evaluate the strength of the junctures occurring in the utterances produced in the production study. The results of the studies provide support for the existence of prosodic strength differences among IP boundaries and also demonstrate a close link between the production and perception of prosodic boundaries. The results are discussed in the context of possible linguistic structural explanations, with implications for cognitive accounts for the creation, implementation, and processing of prosody.

Fig. 1

An example of the identified landmark events and the derived variables. The vertical lines show the identified landmarks (as described in the text). The horizontal full lines show the identified variables, and the dotted lines the acceleration durations (C1 opening movement acceleration duration and C2 closing movement deceleration duration).

Fig. 2

Interaction of boundary and speaker effects on boundary strength perception, means (z-scores) and standard errors.

Fig. 3

Prosodic structures for sentences 1, 2, 3, and 4.