Which Prosodic Features Matter Most for Pragmatics?

Abstract

We investigate which prosodic features matter most in conveying pragmatic functions. We use the problem of predicting human perceptions of pragmatic similarity among utterance pairs to evaluate the utility of prosodic features of different types. We find evidence that the duration-related features are most important, that pitch-related features are much less important and less adequate, and that complete modeling will require additional acoustic and prosodic features, including nasality and phonetic reduction. These findings can guide future basic research in prosody, and suggest how to improve speech synthesis evaluation, among other applications.