Informationsdichte und die Vorhersagbarkeit der phonetischen Struktur
Information density and the predictability of phonetic structure

Summary/Abstract: The study investigates the relation between information density and linguistic encoding in phonetics and human speech processing. Information density of a linguistic unit is defined in terms of surprisal (the unit’s negative log probability in a given context). The effects of surprisal on phonetic encoding have been examined with respect to various aspects such as the formant trajectories of vowels, the voicing of plosives, syllable duration, and vowel dispersion (also in L2), considering control factors of prosodic structure and potential interactions with the Lombard effect and the prosodic structure. The results suggest that speakers adjust phonetic details to maintain a balance between information density and phonetic encoding.

• Details
• Contents