Creation of prosody during sentence production.
Phrase-final words tend to be lengthened and followed by a pause. The dominant view of prosodic production is that word lengthening and pausing reflect the syntax of a sentence. The author demonstrates that, instead, lengthening and pausing reflect a distinctly prosodic representation, in which phonological constituents are arranged in a hierarchical, nonrecursive structure. Prosodic structure is created without knowledge of words' phonemic content. As a result, within a single sentential position, greater word lengthening necessitates shorter pauses, but across positions, word and pause durations show a positive correlation. The author presents a model of prosodic production that describes the process of prosodic encoding and provides a quantitative specification of the relation between word lengthening and pausing. This model has implications for studies of language production, comprehension, and development.
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Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing 48824-1117.
D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D012660:Semantics; D013068:Speech Production Measurement; D014705:Verbal Behavior