F0 PROMINENCE AND SPEECH RHYTHM: THE INITIAL EXPERIMENTS BASED ON ENGLISH AND SERBIAN
F0 PROMINENCE AND SPEECH RHYTHM: THE INITIAL EXPERIMENTS BASED ON ENGLISH AND SERBIAN

Summary/Abstract: The paper examines the relation between F0 prominence and speech rhythm. The research is based on English and Serbian as they differ in the realization of pitch accents in prosodic words. The research included two experiments. The production experiment involved measuring F0 prominence in English and Serbian initially-stressed di- and trisyllabic feet with falling F0 slope, realized as prosodic words within IPs. Prior to the perception experiment, F0 of Serbian IPs was manipulated according to the English measurements and the IPs were resynthesized. The perception experiment involved evaluating the rhythmicity of the original and modified Serbian IPs with uniform and non-uniform interstress intervals on a 5-point Likert scale by 30 Serbian L1 speakers. The production analysis points to a greater F0 prominence in English feet. The perception experiment shows that greater F0 prominence results in higher rhythmicity judgments.

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