ausblenden:
Schlagwörter:
Prosodic phrasing; Rhythm; Electrophysiolog
Zusammenfassung:
Speech is perceived as a sequence of meaningful units of
various lengths, from phones to phrases. Prosody is one of the
means by which these are segmented: Prosodic boundaries sub-
divide utterances into prosodic phrases. In this corpus study, we
study prosodic boundaries from a neurolinguistic perspective.
To be perceived correctly, prosodic phrases must obey neuro-
biological constraints. In particular, electrophysiological pro-
cessing has been argued to operate periodically, with one elec-
trophysiological processing cycle being devoted to the process-
ing of exactly one prosodic phrase. We thus hypothesized that
prosodic phrases as such should show periodicity. We assess
the DIRNDL corpus of German radio news, which has been an-
notated for intonational and intermediate phrases. We find that
sequences of 2–5 intermediate phrases are periodic at 0.8–1.6
Hertz within their superordinate intonation phrase. Across ut-
terances, the duration of intermediate phrases alternates with the
duration of superordinate intonation phrases, indicating a de-
pendence of prosodic time scales. While the determinants of pe-
riodicity are unknown, the results are compatible with an asso-
ciation between periodic electrophysiological processing mech-
anisms and the rhythm of prosody. This contributes to closing
the gap between the the neurobiology of language and linguistic
description.
