The contribution of silent pauses to the perception of prosodic boundaries in Korean read speech

This paper discusses the importance of silent pauses in the perception of prosodic boundaries in Korean speech. It is suggested that in speech in general, and in particular in spontaneous speech, silent pauses are neither necessary nor sufficient for the perception of prosodic boundaries. In read speech, however, there is a high correlation between the presence of a pause and the perception of a boundary. An experiment was carried out to determine whether removing the silent boundary from an extract of speech had a significant effect on the perception of boundaries in Korean read speech. Results suggest that while the presence of a silent boundary slightly reinforces the perception of a prosodic boundary, subjects are in general capable of perceiving the boundary without the silent pause.