Perceptual Cues to Different Degrees of Phonetic Prominence in Large Units of Speech

The present study aims to establish the most frequently used perceptual cues (and their combinations) to high degree of phonetic prominence (HDP) and low degree of phonetic prominence (LDP) in large units of speech – in this paper they are referred to as ‘phrases’ and ‘phonetic paragraphs’. The language under investigation is Standard British English. The results of the perception experiment suggest that the most frequently used perceptual cues to HDP in both phrases and phonetic paragraphs include tempo, pitch range, and degree of articulatory effort. Tempo was found to be the most frequently used parameter signalling LDP. The number of combinations of phonetic parameters used to create HDP is rather limited compared to the number of combinations of phonetic parameters used to create LDP. Our material suggests that it normally takes more phonetic parameters to create HDP than it does to create LDP. The effect of LDP can be achieved by modulations of only one parameter – tempo or a combination of tempo and degree of articulatory effort, whereas HDP is typically created by modulations of three parameters.