Denis Arnold1, Petra Wagner2 & Bernd Möbius1
1University of
Bonn; 2University of
Bielefeld, Germany
The Effect of Priming on the
Correlations between Prominence Ratings and Acoustic Features
In previous
research we showed that the priming paradigm can be used to significantly
alter the prominence ratings of subjects. In that study we only looked at the
changes in the subjects’ ratings. In the present study, we analyzed the
acoustic parameters of the stimuli used in the priming study and investigated
the correlation between prominence ratings and acoustic parameters. The results
show that priming has a significant effect on these correlations.
The contribution of acoustic features on perceived prominence was found to depend
on the prominence pattern. If a dominantly prominent syllable is present in a
given utterance, f0 and intensity contribute most to the perceived prominence,
while duration contributes most when no syllable is dominantly.