Prosodic and intonational domains in speech synthesis

An intonational domain corresponds to the part of an utterance spanned by one intonation contour. We lay out a theory of intonational domains that is rooted in intonational (autosegmental) phonology and prosodic phonology. We focus on restructuring—the process that joins two intonational domains together to form a single domain. We report on a perception experiment about restructuring involving synthetic speech. The results indicate that restructuring is constrained by: (1) syn­ tactic structure, at least the distinction between a PP that is internal and a PP that is external to an NP; and (2) the length of the initial domain before restructuring. Finally, we discuss the consequences of our results for phonological theory and the intonational component in speech synthesis.