Prosodic Boundary Signals in German

The investigations reported on in this paper took their departure from earlier findings which showed rhythmic as well as word boundary effects on segment and syllable durations in German, with different strengths in different speakers. They also pointed to influences from F₀ contours and from coarticulation on this timing adjustment. This article is thus concerned with the interplay of rhythmic and semantic structuring of German speech, signalled by prosodic features, especially by F₀ and duration, marginally also by speech pauses. The rhythmic principle is the segment and syllable compression within the foot basic to stress-timing, modified by various coarticulatory processes, which allow faster executions of speech gestures. The semantic principle is that of information structuring, by organizing speech into information units, at a hierarchy of levels, by marking information points within them, and by establishing various degrees of cohesion within and between these information units.