Zoom link: https://mit.zoom.us/j/93802957370

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Speaker: Moshe Poliak

Affiliation: TedLab

Title: The manner of speech reflects the content of speech

Abstract: We speak to communicate with each other. But every single word we produce has some physical properties: it has a duration, it has pitch (unless the word is whispered), and it has loudness. In this talk, I will show that these physical properties of uttered words reflect their importance in discourse. First, I will review existing observational evidence that words with higher surprisal (more information) are also produced with higher acoustic prominence (increased duration, pitch, loudness). Then, I will present experimental evidence in English and Mandarin that words that are important due to being corrected (e.g., "No, ANNA closed the window") are pronounced with increased acoustic prominence. Finally, I will show preliminary evidence that, in English, corrections that are less predictable are produced with increased acoustic prominence. Taken together, this evidence shows that more important words are produced more prominently, suggesting that speakers change their manner of speech to make important words more robust to noise and to provide additional information about the discourse to the listener.