PHONETIC ENCODING OF PROSODIC STRUCTURE

INTRODUCTION Prosody is the organization of speech into a hierarchy of units or domains, some of which are more prominent than others. That is, prosody serves both a grouping function and a prominence-marking function in speech. As examples of the grouping function, some ways in which smaller units are combined to form larger ones (perhaps via intermediate groupings) include: segments combine to form syllables, syllables combine to form words, and words combine to form phrases. As examples of the prominence-marking function, there are at least two levels of prominence in English: lexical stress, or prominence at the word level, and pitch accent, or prominence at a phrasal level.