Pitch accent type matters for online processing of information status: Evidence from natural and synthetic speech
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Aoju Chen
Abstract
Adopting an eyetracking paradigm, we investigated the role of H*L, L*HL, L*H, H*LH, and deaccentuation at the intonational phrase-final position in online processing of information status in British English in natural speech. The role of H*L, L*H and deaccentuation was also examined in diphonesynthetic speech. It was found that H*L and L*HL create a strong bias towards newness, whereas L*H, like deaccentuation, creates a strong bias towards givenness. In synthetic speech, the same effect was found for H*L, L*H and deaccentuation, but it was delayed. The delay may not be caused entirely by the difference in the segmental quality between synthetic and natural speech. The pitch accent H*LH, however, appears to bias participants' interpretation to the target word, independent of its information status. This finding was explained in the light of the effect of durational information at the segmental level on word recognition.
© Walter de Gruyter
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction
- Phase theory and prosodic spellout: The case of verbs
- Major Phrase, Focus Intonation, Multiple Spell-Out (MaP, FI, MSO)
- Competing syntactic and phonological constraints in Hebrew prosodic phrasing
- Effects of phonological phrasing on syntactic structure
- Phonological phrasing in Northern Sotho (Bantu)
- Global and local durational properties in three varieties of South African English
- The relationship between prosodic structure and pitch accent distribution: Evidence from Egyptian Arabic
- Pitch accent type matters for online processing of information status: Evidence from natural and synthetic speech
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction
- Phase theory and prosodic spellout: The case of verbs
- Major Phrase, Focus Intonation, Multiple Spell-Out (MaP, FI, MSO)
- Competing syntactic and phonological constraints in Hebrew prosodic phrasing
- Effects of phonological phrasing on syntactic structure
- Phonological phrasing in Northern Sotho (Bantu)
- Global and local durational properties in three varieties of South African English
- The relationship between prosodic structure and pitch accent distribution: Evidence from Egyptian Arabic
- Pitch accent type matters for online processing of information status: Evidence from natural and synthetic speech
