Intonation contour and syntactic structure as predictors of apparent segmentation

Abstract

The relative contributions of intonation and syntax to the segmentation or “chunking” of speech stimuli was examined using the “click migration” technique. In the first experiment normal-hearing subjects perceptually located clicks in syntactic and nonsyntactic stimuli in which intonation pattern was varied. The tendency for the perception of interrupting stimuli to cluster was significantly greater at boundaries that were marked by both syntactic and prosodic cues than at those marked by intonation alone. In the second experiment sentences in which intonation pattern was varied were presented on videotape to deaf and normal-hearing lip readers. Subjects were required to locate a visual flash embedded in the spoken sentence without auditory cues to intonation pattern. The normal-hearing subjects failed to show significant perceptual migration of interrupting flashes. Deaf subjects, however, showed significant perceptual migration toward the major syntactic boundary when it coincided with the intonation boundary. Deaf subjects' performance on the lip-reading task strongly resembled that of normal subjects on the auditory task. [Work supported by NIH.]