A Functional View of Prosodic Timing in Speech

Abstract

This paper attempts to explain some aspects of prosodie timing in speech. Current explanatory principles such as ›isochrony‹, ›anticipatory shortenings‹ and ›time compression of motor commands in short-term storage‹ are blamed for begging the question. An alternative, functional, view is proposed, relating prosodie timing to requirements of efficiency in speech communications. It is suggested that a speaker continuously adapts his articulation to what a listener (supposedly) needs at each point in the utterance. Following this general principle, prosodie timing, including the insertion of well formed speech pauses, is related to the time course of word perception in connected speech. It is attempted to demonstrate that a number of well known regularities in prosodie time follow quite naturally from the functional view taken here, if such factors as the local redundancy of the message and the quality of the communication channel are taken into account.