TY - GEN
T1 - Listeners are sensitive to prosody in segmental categorization
AU - Steffman, Jeremy
N1 - Acknowledgements: Many thanks to Sun-Ah Jun, Megha Sundara, Pat Keating and
Jesse Harris for valuable advice. Thanks to Adam Royer for recording for the stimuli, to Henri Tehrani for technical assistance and to Yang Wang for work as an RA.
PY - 2018/6/16
Y1 - 2018/6/16
N2 - Two experiments were designed to test if and how listeners’ awareness of prosodic structure might modulate categorization of speech segments. This possibility has been challenged by recent experiments showing an effect originally analyzed as originating from awareness of prosodic structure might simply be due to speech rate normalization. The current studies test for listener awareness of prosodic structure in a way that is not confounded with rate normalization. Experiment 1 shows that tonal melodies influence categorization, where an IP boundary tone appears to give the percept of increased speech rate when compressed onto a short vowel, suggesting listener awareness of intonationally defined prosodic structures and their temporal manifestation. Experiment 2 shows that expectations about phrase final lengthening modulate segment categorization in a directionality that is not predicted by rate normalization. Taken together, the experiments suggest that prosodic structure is relevant for listeners in their categorization of speech segments.
AB - Two experiments were designed to test if and how listeners’ awareness of prosodic structure might modulate categorization of speech segments. This possibility has been challenged by recent experiments showing an effect originally analyzed as originating from awareness of prosodic structure might simply be due to speech rate normalization. The current studies test for listener awareness of prosodic structure in a way that is not confounded with rate normalization. Experiment 1 shows that tonal melodies influence categorization, where an IP boundary tone appears to give the percept of increased speech rate when compressed onto a short vowel, suggesting listener awareness of intonationally defined prosodic structures and their temporal manifestation. Experiment 2 shows that expectations about phrase final lengthening modulate segment categorization in a directionality that is not predicted by rate normalization. Taken together, the experiments suggest that prosodic structure is relevant for listeners in their categorization of speech segments.
KW - speech perception
KW - prosodic structure
KW - intonation
KW - speech rate normalization
KW - segment categorization
U2 - 10.21437/SpeechProsody.2018-56
DO - 10.21437/SpeechProsody.2018-56
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85050236067
VL - 2018-June
T3 - Proceedings of the International Conference on Speech Prosody
SP - 274
EP - 278
BT - Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Speech Prosody
PB - ISCA
T2 - 9th International Conference on Speech Prosody, SP 2018
Y2 - 13 June 2018 through 16 June 2018
ER -