Producing words in connected speech: the role of prosodic units
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Birmingham
Department Name: School of Psychology
Abstract
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Organisations
| Description | [1] Our findings have implications for both psycholinguistic and linguistic theory. We have shown that the prosodic word is a planning unit in the production of English as well as Dutch (Wheeldon & Lahiri, 1997). This cross-linguistic replication confirms the role of prosodic units in speech planning in Germanic languages and opens the prospect that they may be fundamental to the planning of sentences in all languages, subject to language internal constraints. In addition, our research has verified the delayed and on-line production methodologies as reliable diagnostic tools for prosodic units. This provides linguistic researchers with an objective experimental technique for testing theoretical claims across other language families. [2] Our data also provide evidence for a phonological grouping of lexical items rather than a purely syntactic phrasing. Weak function words prefer to cliticise and group with the preceding lexical item rather than the following item, ignoring the syntactic phrasing which may prefer a functional head to the left. This has theoretical implications for both linguistic models of the syntax-phonology interface and psycholinguistic models of incremental speech planning. [3] Finally our study has demonstrated a clear link between the prosodic and articulatory properties of speech. We had not anticipated that the prosodic grouping of the sentence initial pronouns in English would vary according to their inherent phonetic properties, as well as be influenced by the initial segment of the following verb. We have completed detailed acoustic analyses, which suggest hitherto unknown phonetic reductions and resyllabifications within sentence initial prosodic groups. |
| Exploitation Route | We are continuing to use the experimental techniques developed here as a diagnostic for prosoduc srtucutre, are other researchers. |
| Sectors | Other |
| Description | , New YorkGenerating phonological words: evidence from English phrase production. CUNY NY |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Type Of Presentation | paper presentation |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Postdoc present research Talk was well received |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2010 |
| Description | Generating phonological words: evidence from English phrase production. EPS, Granada |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Type Of Presentation | poster presentation |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Postdoc presented poster Poster was well received |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2010 |
| Description | Generating phonological words: evidence from English phrase production. Manchester Phonology meeting |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Type Of Presentation | paper presentation |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Postdoc presented research Talk was well recieved |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2010 |
| Description | Planning connected speech: phonological word structure in English phrase production. Workshop Queen Mary University of London |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Type Of Presentation | paper presentation |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Postdoc gave the talk which was well received. The postdoc reported requestion about research publication |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2010 |
| Description | Planning spoken sentences: the role of prosodic units. Seminar on Prosodic Interfaces. JNU New Delhi |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Type Of Presentation | keynote/invited speaker |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | The talk was given to a largely linguistic audience and was well recieved. A great deal of interest was shown in our findings and in using the experimental method we developed as a diagnostic linguisitic tool. Increased interest in experimental research |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2011 |
| Description | Pronoun attachment in English prosodic word production. Frontiers of Prosody workshop. Leiden, NL |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Type Of Presentation | keynote/invited speaker |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | The talk was to an linguistic audience who showed a great deal of interest in the experimental method Interest in out methodology as a tool in linguistics |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2010 |
| Description | Pronoun attachment in English prosodic word production. Invited seminar, Department of Linguistics, University of Texas at Austin |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | Invited seminar given to Department of Linguistics, University of Texas at Austin. Audience showed interest in the novel method. interest in publication |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2013 |