Prosody

Abstract

‘Prosody’ encompasses phenomena related to aspects of speech such as melody, rhythm, stress, phrasing, pauses, and voice quality. These are related to pitch (voice fundamental frequency, f0), loudness (intensity), duration (timing), and speech rate. Prosodic phenomena are ‘suprasegmental’. In other words, they typically involve units of at least one syllable in length. The results of a study by Wiklund et al. (forthcoming) proved both experimentally and statistically that neurotypical Finnish-speaking adults find the prosody of preadolescent, Finnish-speaking boys with ASD more atypical than the prosody of age- and gender-matched controls. In general, the speech samples of the ASD individuals were rated as significantly more atypical than the samples of the control group. Potential causes of the perception of atypicality include the following prosodic features: sing-song pitch, bouncing pitch, disconnected speech rhythm, large pitch excursions, and flat pitch. It is noteworthy that these features surprisingly often gave the impression of a non-native accent. Wiklund (2016) demonstrates that the most common prosodic feature related to trouble-source turns causing comprehension problems in interaction between preadolescents with ASD and neurotypical adults is a creaky voice. A quiet voice and large pitch excursions are also relatively frequent. It is noteworthy that even if the trouble-source turns often carry certain prosodic features in these data and these features may contribute to the creation of the repair sequence, in very few cases do prosodic features seem to be the main cause of the comprehension problem (Lehtinen, 2012; Wiklund, 2016). The results of a study by Wiklund et al. (2021) show that speakers with ASD can use utterance-final pitch rises as an interactional resource. Indeed, they can call for other participants’ reactions and indicate that they take other participants into account with the help of utterance-final pitch rises (Routarinne, 2003). They can also ‘recycle’ prosody, that is, repeat the prosody of a previous speaker. In addition, the informants can correctly produce and interpret prosodic features indicating finality in a spontaneous interaction. They can also emphasise words with the help of stress and changes in intonation.