Context dependent and time-course dependent prosodic analysis

Abstract

In this preliminary study, we examine the change in prosodic parameters along personal interviews comprised of six questions. Our purpose is to demonstrate the importance of examining prosodic discourse context when studying conversational prosody. Findings show that as the interview unfolds, speakers tend to increase their speaking rate in longer IPUs while their intensity is lowered, and its instability increases. It is suggested here that the meaningful context that might explain the behavior of the acoustic parameters is the level of intimacy for one group of features, and the level of fluency and "easy going" topic for a different group of features. This preliminary study shows that context dependent and time-course dependent prosodic analysis are associated with the discourse content and can assist in understanding the discourse as a whole and the interaction in which it occurred.