Acoustic and respiratory evidence for utterance planning in German

This study investigates prosodic planning in a reading task in German. We analyse how the utterance length and syntactic complexity of an upcoming sentence affect two acoustic parameters (pause duration and the initial fundamental frequency peak) and two respiratory parameters (inhalation depth and inhalation duration). Two experiments were carried out.In the first experiment, data for twelve native speakers of German were recorded. They read sentences varying in length (short, long) and syntactic complexity (simple, complex). Data were analysed on the basis of the four phonetic parameters. Pause duration, inhalation depth and inhalation duration showed significant differences with respect to sentence length, but not to syntactic complexity. The initial f0 peak was not influenced by variations in length or syntactic complexity.In the second experiment it was hypothesized that the initial f0 peak is only sensitive to length manipulations of the first constituent. Twenty speakers were recorded reading utterances varying in the length of the first (short, medium, long) and last syntactic constituent (short, long). Results for the initial f0 peak confirmed our hypothesis. It is concluded that the breathing parameters and pause duration are global parameters for planning of the upcoming sentence whereas the height of the fundamental frequency peak is a more local measure sensitive to the length of the first constituent.

► We investigate speech planning and how it is reflected in selected acoustic and respiratory parameters. - Planning a long utterance in comparison to a short one leads to longer preceding pause duration, deeper inhalation and longer inhalation duration. ► The utterance initial f0 peak is mainly sensitive to the length of the subject constituent. The effect of utterance length on pause duration is less consistent than in previous studies however. ► Differences among the parameters reflect differences in global versus local planning.