Previous studies of the interaction between syntactic structure and prosodic organization have not resolved whether there is articulatory and acoustic evidence for categories of prosodic boundaries or phrase types. One of the major problems in interpreting past studies is that the effects of speech rate have not been thoroughly examined. In the current study, we used a visual analogue cue to elicit continuous variation in speech rate for the production of two types of relative clauses. We hypothesized that if syntactic structure is mapped to categorical differences in prosodic organization, then measures of articulator kinematics and acoustic durations at phrase boundaries should differ or should scale differently with rate. Articulographic and acoustic data were collected from four English speakers. Analyses of gestural timing and movement range revealed strong differences in the effects of rate at boundaries before vs. after the relative clauses. Interaction effects between relative clause type and rate were found for some speakers. For acoustic measurements, both effects of boundary and relative clause type were observed. These findings are important because they show that articulatory kinematic and acoustic variables are more sensitive to rate variation at some phrasal boundaries than others.
Cite as: Kim, S.-E., Tilsen, S. (2020) Speech rate and syntactically conditioned influences on prosodic boundaries. Proc. Speech Prosody 2020, 434-438, doi: 10.21437/SpeechProsody.2020-89
@inproceedings{kim20_speechprosody,
author={Seung-Eun Kim and Sam Tilsen},
title={{Speech rate and syntactically conditioned influences on prosodic boundaries}},
year=2020,
booktitle={Proc. Speech Prosody 2020},
pages={434--438},
doi={10.21437/SpeechProsody.2020-89}
}