Prosodic structure at the interface between language and speech

• Applicant: Dr. Tina Bögel
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages ; Applied Linguistics, Computational Linguistics
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 468479400

Both language redundancy and prosodic structure affect characteristics of speech related to acoustic salience and intelligibility. The Smooth Signal Redundancy Hypothesis assumes an inverse relationship between language redundancy and acoustic redundancy, mediated via prosodic structure. Previous research also suggested that different language redundancy factors can enhance, hinder, or cancel each other, and that they have varying effects on the different acoustic factors. The goals of this project are 1) to test the interaction between different language redundancy factors and their respective influences on acoustic redundancy, and 2) to implement these interactions into a formal model of grammar. The first strand of the project tests the effects of word frequency, semantic priming, and syntactic ambiguities and their respective interactions on duration and F0 in three production experiments. The second strand of the project involves modelling the effects of the first part within Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG). The modular correspondence architecture of LFG provides an optimal theoretical framework that allows for an interaction between different aspects of grammar. By means of an implementation in a computational LFG grammar, we intend to test the formal model in its complete range from the semantic analysis to the speech signal, and to extend the framework to model the influence of frequency and other predictability effects on a gradient representation of prosodic structure.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants