EUROSPEECH '93 Third European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology Berlin, Germany September 22-25, 1993

Prosodic Cues to the Perception of Constituent Boundaries

Jan Roelof de Pijper, Angelien Sanderman

Institute for Perception Research, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

This article is concerned with the relationship between the strength of prosodic boundaries in spoken utterances as perceived by untrained listeners and the phonetic cues melodic discontinuity, pause and declination reset. It is shown that boundary strength can be approached and measured as a perceptual variable in its own right. Clear relationships are found between perceptual boundary strength and both phonetic events and predicted prosodic boundary levels.

Keywords: prosody, intonation, pausing, boundary strength

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Pijper, Jan Roelof de / Sanderman, Angelien (1993): "Prosodic cues to the perception of constituent boundaries", In EUROSPEECH'93, 1210-1214.