We investigated the expression of prosodic prominence related to unpredictability
and relevance in spontaneous dyadic interactions in which interlocutors
could or could not see each other. Interactions between visibility
and prominence were analyzed in a verbal version of the game TicTacToe.
This setting allows for disentangling different types of information
structure: early moves tend to be unpredictable, but are typically
irrelevant for the immediate outcome of the game, while late moves
tend to be predictable but relevant, as they usually prevent an opponent’s
winning move or constitute a winning move by themselves.
Our analyses on German
reveal that prominence expression is affected globally by visibility
conditions: speech becomes overall softer and faster when interlocutors
can see each other. However, speakers differentiate unpredictability
and relevance-related accents rather consistently using intensity cues
both under visibility and invisibility conditions. We also find that
pitch excursions related to prosodic information structure are not
affected by visibility. Our findings support effort-optimization models
of speech production, but also models that regard speech production
as an integrated bimodal process with a high degree of congruency across
domains.
Cite as: Wagner, P., Bryhadyr, N. (2017) What You See is What You Get Prosodically Less — Visibility Shapes Prosodic Prominence Production in Spontaneous Interaction. Proc. Interspeech 2017, 3226-3230, doi: 10.21437/Interspeech.2017-177
@inproceedings{wagner17b_interspeech,
author={Petra Wagner and Nataliya Bryhadyr},
title={{What You See is What You Get Prosodically Less — Visibility Shapes Prosodic Prominence Production in Spontaneous Interaction}},
year=2017,
booktitle={Proc. Interspeech 2017},
pages={3226--3230},
doi={10.21437/Interspeech.2017-177}
}