Use of nonsense-syllable mimicry in the study of prosodic phenomena

Abstract

The technique of nonsense-syllable mimicry of natural utterances has many advantages in the study of prosodic phenomena, especially duration. In analytic studies, the elimination of segmental effects as a factor makes data collection much more efficient, and requires only 1 segmentation criterion. In perceptual studies, the technique eliminates lexical information without unnatural distortions of the signal. In a series of validation experiments, it was found that the patterns of duration obtained by using this technique were stable and reproducible within and across speakers; and mimicry of different natural models with identical stress patterns and constituent structures produced nearly indistinguishable nonsense-syllable duration patterns.