O Papel da Prosódia no Processamento da Estrutura de Eventos em Narrativas Orais Espontâneas

Abstract

In this work, we investigate the role of prosody in processing event structure in spoken speech. The objective was to analyze the characteristics of the prosodic boundaries perceived as prominent by the participants of an experiment in the task of segmenting spontaneous narratives based on the perception of events. Based on studies on the role of prosody in the structuring of spoken discourse and on the representation of events in spoken language, we start from the general hypothesis that there would be a pattern in the characteristics of prosodic boundaries perceived as event boundaries. Thirty spontaneous oral narratives were recorded and selected for the experiment, and about 30 subjects participated in the experiment. In these narratives, we analyzed restarts of F0, values of intensity and duration of stressed syllables adjacent to prosodic boundaries, and the occurrence of silent pauses in these boundaries. In the statistical analyses, we launched the linear model, mixed linear, and binomial logistic regression tests. We found that the prosodic boundaries perceived by listeners as being the demarcation of the passage from one event to the other within the spoken discourse had specific characteristics: greater F0 resetting, lower intensity values in the stressed syllable immediately preceding the prosodic boundary, and significant presence of silent pauses both at prosodic boundaries corresponding to event boundaries and non-prominent ones. Finally, we emphasize the importance of using online techniques to investigate the phenomenon analyzed here, since the effects of prosodic perception on the processing of events in real-time are not yet known.