Scott, D. R. (1982). Duration as a cue to the perception of a phrase boundary. The Journal of Acoustical Society of America 71 (4), 996–1007.
How listeners parse syntactically ambiguous sentences has been investigated since the 1970’s. In the present study, the author aimed at testing whether the cue of phrase-final lengthening is used directly (phrase-final lengthening hypothesis) or indirectly (foot hypothesis). Two syntactically ambiguous sentences (Kate or Pat and Tony will come & Bert and Peter or Bob will take charge) were recorded from a native English speaker, and these readings were later on re-synthesized into monotones for four judgment tests, each with a manipulation on a different cue: In Experiment 1, a pause at the “false” phrase boundary was inserted; in Experiment 2, in addition to the insertion of a pause, the final stressed syllable was also lengthened; in Experiment 3, all segments in the foot were lengthened; in Experiment 4, only the conjunction word was lengthened. Results showed that stress rhythm was more powerful in influencing listeners’ decision on the perception of the location of a phrase boundary (foot hypothesis was supported). In addition, lengthening of the final stressed syllable further enhanced this effect, and the manipulation on mere the conjunctions did not alter listeners’ judgment, which indicates that lengthening should not be equally distributed among all segments within a foot, and it is the weak version of the foot hypothesis that is supported.
No comments:
Post a Comment