TY - JOUR
T1 - The timing of head movements: The role of prosodic heads and edges
AU - Esteve-Gibert, Núria
AU - Borràs-Comes, Joan
AU - Asor, Eli
AU - Swerts, Marc
AU - Prieto, Pilar
PY - 2017/6/1
Y1 - 2017/6/1
N2 - © 2017 Acoustical Society of America. This study examines the influence of the position of prosodic heads (accented syllables) and prosodic edges (prosodic word and intonational phrase boundaries) on the timing of head movements. Gesture movements and prosodic events tend to be temporally aligned in the discourse, the most prominent part of gestures typically being aligned with prosodically prominent syllables in speech. However, little is known about the impact of the position of intonational phrase boundaries on gesture-speech alignment patterns. Twenty-four Catalan speakers produced spontaneous (experiment 1) and semi-spontaneous head gestures with a confirmatory function (experiment 2), along with phrase-final focused words in different prosodic conditions (stress-initial, stress-medial, and stress-final). Results showed (a) that the scope of head movements is the associated focused prosodic word, (b) that the left edge of the focused prosodic word determines where the interval of gesture prominence starts, and (c) that the speech-anchoring site for the gesture peak (or apex) depends both on the location of the accented syllable and the distance to the upcoming intonational phrase boundary. These results demonstrate that prosodic heads and edges have an impact on the timing of head movements, and therefore that prosodic structure plays a central role in the timing of co-speech gestures.
AB - © 2017 Acoustical Society of America. This study examines the influence of the position of prosodic heads (accented syllables) and prosodic edges (prosodic word and intonational phrase boundaries) on the timing of head movements. Gesture movements and prosodic events tend to be temporally aligned in the discourse, the most prominent part of gestures typically being aligned with prosodically prominent syllables in speech. However, little is known about the impact of the position of intonational phrase boundaries on gesture-speech alignment patterns. Twenty-four Catalan speakers produced spontaneous (experiment 1) and semi-spontaneous head gestures with a confirmatory function (experiment 2), along with phrase-final focused words in different prosodic conditions (stress-initial, stress-medial, and stress-final). Results showed (a) that the scope of head movements is the associated focused prosodic word, (b) that the left edge of the focused prosodic word determines where the interval of gesture prominence starts, and (c) that the speech-anchoring site for the gesture peak (or apex) depends both on the location of the accented syllable and the distance to the upcoming intonational phrase boundary. These results demonstrate that prosodic heads and edges have an impact on the timing of head movements, and therefore that prosodic structure plays a central role in the timing of co-speech gestures.
U2 - 10.1121/1.4986649
DO - 10.1121/1.4986649
M3 - Article
VL - 141
SP - 4727
EP - 4739
JO - Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
JF - Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
SN - 0001-4966
IS - 6
ER -