Nontraditional acoustic features of focus

Abstract

Natural productions of the sentence ‘‘Bob bought Bogg’s box’’ in which focus was varied over each of the four words of the sentence were altered to produce prosodic cue neutralized versions. The alterations were applied singly and in all possible combinations to form eight experimental versions of each original sentence (the original and seven cue-neutralized versions). The original sentences as spoken by eight talkers and their cue-neutralized versions were presented to listeners with the task of identifying the focused item in the sentence. Results indicated that (a) overall, F0 cues were more important than either amplitude or duration cues in signaling focus, (b) the importance of amplitude and duration cues was greatly enhanced when F0 cues were neutralized, and (c) in many cases, identification of focus remained above chance after all three acoustic features were neutralized. The present study reports analyses of the residual acoustic features which continue to convey focus when amplitude, duration, and F0 are neutralized. [Work supported by NIDRR and the Nemours Research programs.]