The relationship between boundary markers and audible inhalation in Hungarian read speech

Abstract

It is well known that prosodic features – next to meaning-modifying and meaning-clarifying functions – can also act as boundary markers, however, it is unclear that which prosodic cues and in what combination. The results of previous research, have yielded contradictory results as to which are the strongest, most frequently occurring, or most consistent prosodic cues, in part due to different languages and methods. Dissimilarly from most languages analyzed earlier, Hungarian is a left-headed head-/edge prominence language. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to investigate the difference in the relationship of prosodic boundary markers and the audible inhalation between the two kinds of clauses in Hungarian read speech and according to the length of the first clauses of the sentences. Based on 20 young adult male and female Hungarian speakers' text and sentence reading, altogether 320 (coordinated, CO and subordinated, SUB) clause end positions were examined. Silent pauses, the appearance of high/low tones, creaky voice, and the realization of the audible inhalation (based on the agreement of 2 annotators) were labeled. The results revealed differences between boundary marking in CO and SUB clauses: SUB clauses were more often realized with no marking, while CO boundaries were labeled with low tone and creaky voice. Besides, notable differences were also observed in the boundary marking cues after long and short clauses.