PhD candidate Seung-Eun Kim presented a poster titled: "Phonetic evidence for categorical differences in prosodic structure" at the 179th meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, held Dec 7-11, 2020

Her poster described  experimental phonetic evidence for categorically distinct prosodic structures associated with two types of relative clauses in English. 

Most of the phonetic measures showed a significant difference between the two syntactic structures, which provides some evidence for distinct prosodic categories.  However, a non-linearity analyses in both structures showed weak evidence for categorical variation in prosodic structure.

Grad Student Seung-Eun Kim presented a paper titled:  "The effects of speech rate on the phonetic correlates of syntactic structure" at the 95th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA 2022), held Jan 6-9, 2021.

Here is the abstract for her paper:

This study provides empirical evidence that speakers make prosodic contrasts to mark different syntactic structures.

This finding is obtained by examining articulatory and acoustic measures at prosodic boundaries in two types of English relative clauses, non-restrictive relative clauses (NRRC) and restrictive relative clauses (RRC).

Crucially, in examining their difference, the present study uses a moving visual analogue and elicits continuous variation in speech rate.

With this method, the study additionally shows that the prosodic contrasts which cue differences in syntactic structure are neutralized at fast speech rates.

Seung-Eun Kim presented a paper titled "The effects of speech rate on the phonetic correlates of syntactic structure" at the 95th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, held Jan 7-10, 2021

Seung-Eun provided empirical evidence that speakers make prosodic contrasts to mark different syntactic structures, but these contrasts are neutralized at fast speech rates. Her  findings were obtained by examining articulatory and acoustic measures at prosodic boundaries in two types of English relative clauses.

Seung-Eun Kim presented a paper titled "The effects of speech rate on the phonetic correlates of syntactic structure" at the 95th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, held virtually Jan 7-10, 2021.

Paper Abstract:

This study provides empirical evidence that speakers make prosodic contrasts to mark different syntactic structures, but these contrasts are neutralized at fast speech rates. T

These findings were obtained by examining articulatory and acoustic measures at prosodic boundaries in two types of English relative clauses. Non-restrictive relative clauses (NRRC) and restrictive relative clauses (RRC) are syntactically and semantically distinct. As in example (1), a NRRC is similar to a parenthetical, while a RRC crucially contributes to the meaning of the sentence. Given these differences, it is reasonable to predict that the two structures have different prosodic organization; in particular, Selkirk (2005) predicted the prosodic structure of the two clauses as in (1).

The present study thus examines whether the two structures are phonetically distinct. Moreover, in investigating their difference, the present study elicits continuous variation in speech rate and examines how the phonetic measurements associated with the two RCs vary by rate. While previous studies on speech rate and prosodic structure (e.g., Fougeron & Jun 1998) varied speech rate categorically, using instructions such as “speak fast or slow”, the current study uses a moving visual analogue to elicit continuous speech rate and examines how the speech rate affects prosodic variation.

Two hypotheses are examined: (a) boundary position differences: prosodic boundaries before (B1) vs. after (B2) the RC are different in each sentence, (b) syntactic differences: prosodic boundaries in NRRC vs. RRC are different at B1 and B2.

The results show strong evidence of boundary position differences, but mixed evidence for syntactic differences. In addition, the study found that the prosodic difference between the two structures is affected by speech rate.