Prosodic structure at the interface between language and speech

语言冗余度和韵律结构都会影响与声学突显和可懂度相关的语音特征。韵律结构是语法和语音之间的接口，这一主张导致了说话者计划话语的韵律结构，以便通过其对声学突显的影响来使较难预测的词类更容易理解(平滑信号冗余假说，Aylett 2000)。这个项目的目标是1)检验韵律结构是语言和言语之间的接口这一假设，2)在语法的(计算)模型中实现这个接口，以便测试和评估我们的架构假设。韵律界面假说的一个预测是，不同类型的语言冗余(可预测性)措施应该对语音声学有类似的影响，例如对基频和时长的影响。也就是说，它们都应该影响与韵律突出度和边界强度相关的单词的属性和部分。该项目的第一部分测试了重复、长度、句法、单词二元语法、词频和语用语言冗余措施对单词相关部分的停顿和语音声学的影响，并将这些影响与韵律突出和边界强度的已知影响进行了比较。该项目的第二部分涉及在词汇功能语法(LFG)中对第一部分的影响进行建模。LFG的模块化对应体系结构提供了一个最佳的理论框架，该框架允许语法的不同方面之间的交互。通过在计算LFG文法中的实现，我们打算测试形式模型从语义分析到语音信号的完整范围，并扩展框架以模拟频率和其他可预测性效应对韵律结构梯度表示的影响。

Both language redundancy and prosodic structure affect characteristics of speech related to acoustic salience and intelligibility. Proposals that prosodic structure is the interface between grammar and speech led to propose that speakers plan the prosodic structure of an utterance in order to make less predictable parts of speech more intelligible via its effects on acoustic saliency (the Smooth Signal Redundancy Hypothesis, Aylett 2000). The goals of this project are 1) to test the hypothesis that prosodic structure is the interface between language and speech, and 2) to implement this interface in a (computational) model of grammar in order to test and evaluate our architectural assumptions. A prediction of the Prosodic Interface Hypothesis is that different types of language redundancy (predictability) measures should have similar effects on speech acoustics, e.g., on the fundamental frequency and duration. That is, they should all affect properties and parts of words that relate to prosodic prominence and boundary strength. The first strand of the project tests the effects of repetition, length, syntactic, word-bigram, word frequency, and pragmatic language redundancy measures on pauses and speech acoustics in relevant parts of words, and compares these effects to known effects of prosodic prominence and boundary strength. The second strand of the project involves modelling the effects of the first part within Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG). The modular correspondence architecture of LFG provides an optimal theoretical framework that allows for an interaction between different aspects of grammar. By means of an implementation in a computational LFG grammar, we intend to test the formal model in its complete range from the semantic analysis to the speech signal, and to extend the framework to model the influence of frequency and other predictability effects on a gradient representation of prosodic structure.