14th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-14)San Francisco, CA, USA |
This paper presents an overview of the results of our study on the
prosodic aspects of information structure in spontaneous
discourse. We recorded speech material of eight speakers of
standard Dutch. They read aloud a short story, which they
subsequently retold in their own words. The verbatim
transcriptions of these retold versions were analyzed for
discourse structure (boundaries and information status), using a
purely text-based framework. These analyses are taken as a
reference point to which acoustic realization and perceived
structure are related.
The aims of the study are to find out what acoustic means
are used by speakers to signal the structure of spontaneously
spoken discourse, and how these cues are used by listeners to
detect the structure of the message.
Results show that discourse boundaries are marked with
high boundary tones, also at locations where a low tone was
expected. Heavier boundaries are marked with longer pauses.
Listeners use acoustic pauses more than boundary tones as a cue
for discerning phrasing. Furthermore, there appeared to be an
ordering in the percentage pitch accented and perceived as
prominent for speakers and listeners relative to information
status: new > inferrable > modifier > discourse marker > verb.
Bibliographic reference. Donzel, Monique E. van (1999): "Prosodic characteristics of information structure in spontaneous discourse in Dutch", In ICPhS-14, 1177-1180.