Sentence intonation and syllable stress in speech produced during simultaneous communication

Abstract

This study investigated prosodic variables of syllable stress and intonation contours in contextual speech produced during simultaneous communication (SC). Ten normal-hearing, experienced sign language users were recorded under SC and speech only (SO) conditions speaking a set of sentences containing stressed versus unstressed versions of the same syllables and a set of sentences containing interrogative versus declarative versions of the same words. Results indicated longer sentence durations for SC than SO for all speech materials. Vowel duration and fundamental frequency differences between stressed and unstressed syllables as well as intonation contour differences between declarative and interrogative sentences were essentially the same in both SC and SO conditions. The conclusion that prosodic rules were not violated in SC is consistent with previous research indicating that temporal alterations produced by simultaneous communication do not involve violations of other temporal rules of English speech.