Boundary Markers in Spontaneous Hungarian Speech

Abstract

The aim of this paper is an objective presentation of temporal features of spontaneous Hungarian narratives, as well as a characterization of separable portions of spontaneous speech. Ten speakers’ spontaneous speech materials taken from the BEA Hungarian Spontaneous Speech Database were analyzed in terms of hierarchical units of narratives (durations, speakers’ rates of articulation, number of words produced, and the interrelationships of all these). We conclude that (i) the majority of speakers organize their narratives in similar temporal structures, (ii) thematic units can be identified in terms of certain prosodic criteria, (iii) there are statistically valid correlations between factors like the duration of phrases, the word count of phrases, the rate of articulation of phrases, and pausing characteristics, and (iv) these parameters exhibit extensive variability both across and within speakers.