The role of syntactic structure in guiding prosody perception with ordinary listeners and everyday speech

TLDR

The study investigates how syntactic structure influences prosody production and perception in spontaneous speech, testing whether syntax shapes prosodic boundaries, listener sensitivity to acoustic duration, and whether syntax directly affects boundary perception independent of acoustic cues. The authors analyzed conversational speech from the Buckeye corpus, using real‑time prosodic transcriptions produced by 97 untrained listeners. Boundary strength judgments were reliably coded by listeners and were strongly predicted by both syntactic clause boundaries and vowel duration, with syntax contributing beyond acoustic duration alone.

Abstract

The relationship between syntactic and prosodic phrase structures is investigated in the production and perception of spontaneous speech. Three hypotheses are tested: (1) syntax influences prosody production; (2) listeners' perception of prosodic boundaries is sensitive to acoustic duration; and (3) syntax directly influences boundary perception, (partly) independent of the acoustic evidence for boundaries. Data are from the Buckeye corpus of conversational speech, and the real-time prosodic transcription of those data by 97 untrained listeners. Inter-transcriber agreement codes boundary strength at word junctures, and Boundary scores are shown to be correlated with both the syntactic context and vowel duration of a word. Vowel duration is also correlated with syntactic context, but the effect of syntactic context on boundary perception is not fully explained by vowel duration. Regression analyses show that syntactic clause boundaries and vowel duration are the first and second strongest predictors of boundary perception in spontaneous speech.