EUROSPEECH '95 Fourth European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology Madrid, Spain September 18-21, 1995

Pragmatic Factors Affecting the Phonetic Properties of Diphthongs

Lourdes Aguilar, Maria Machuca

Dep. de Filologia Espanyola, Facultat de Lletres, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain

In this study, the main aim is to investigate the interaction of two pragmatic factors - familiarity between the speakers and intentionality of the speech act- by means of the study of the phonetic realization of diphthongs in Spanish. The experiment compares the acoustic properties of diphthongs found in four speech situations: map task with a familiar addressee, map task with an unfamiliar addressee, interview with a familiar interviewer and interview with an unfamiliar interviewer. Only in the case of the map task is an overt intentionality assumed. It is inferred from the results that a set of phonetic processes can be described in informal unread speech, and that it is the frequency of occurrence of each process which characterises different speech situations. Moreover, it has been shown that the existence of familiarity between the speakers triggers the preference of speakers towards a particular phonetic process when they are performing a specific task.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Aguilar, Lourdes / Machuca, Maria (1995): "Pragmatic factors affecting the phonetic properties of diphthongs", In EUROSPEECH-1995, 2251-2254.