Pitch accent type matters for online processing of information status

Evidence from natural and synthetic speech

Bibliographic Data

ID20344234
AuthorsAnqi Chen (0000-0002-6745-9794, Max Planck Society), Els Den Os (Max Planck Society), Jan P De Ruiter (0000-0003-2897-8804, Max Planck Society)
Year2007
Volume24
Issue2-3
Publication date2007-01-21
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Linguistic Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0167-6318 • E-ISSN: 1613-3676
PublisherWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/tlr.2007.012
OpenAlexW1974515092
LanguageEN
Citations received15
References cited11

Adopting an eyetracking paradigm, we investigated the role of H*L, L*HL, L*H, H*LH, and deaccentuation at the intonational phrase-final position in online processing of information status in British English in natural speech. The role of H*L, L*H and deaccentuation was also examined in diphonesynthetic speech. It was found that H*L and L*HL create a strong bias towards newness, whereas L*H, like deaccentuation, creates a strong bias towards givenness. In synthetic speech, the same effect was found for H*L, L*H and deaccentuation, but it was delayed. The delay may not be caused entirely by the difference in the segmental quality between synthetic and natural speech. The pitch accent H*LH, however, appears to bias participants' interpretation to the target word, independent of its information status. This finding was explained in the light of the effect of durational information at the segmental level on word recognition

Linguistics · Phrase · Pitch accent · Prosody · Speech recognition · Speech synthesis · Computer Science · History · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism · Philosophy · Phonetics and Phonology Research · Psychology

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