Perception of prosodic boundaries by naïve listeners in three different types of subordinate syntactic constructions

This paper investigates the use of prosodic and syntactic information in the perception of boundaries in extracts of spontaneous speech. 30 naïve listeners had to measure boundary strength for 52 extracts on a 5-point scale. The stimuli all contained three tone-units, the second being a syntactic subordinate construction, which was established as a variable. The prosodic cues at the boundary between the tone-units were also established as variables, and were subject to manipulation (addition of a single cue associated with the perception of a prosodic boundary). The stimuli were also resynthesized in another set to obliterate lexical and syntactic content while keeping syllabic structure and intonation. Results show that naïve listeners are able to identify different degrees of break, and that the three syntactic types show different interactions with ratings. Although a silent pause is the strongest cue to boundary perception for all three types of subordination, the orders and levels of association with other prosodic cues are not the same across syntactic types.