Degrees of freedom in prosody modeling

Degrees of freedom (DOF) refer to the number of free parameters in a model that need to be independently controlled for generating intended output. In this paper, we discuss how DOF is a critical issue not only for computational modeling, but also for theoretical understanding of prosody. The relevance of DOF is examined from the perspective of the motor control of articulatory movements, the acquisition of speech production skills, and the communicative functions conveyed by prosody. In particular, we explore the issue of DOF in the temporal aspect of speech, and show that, due to certain fundamental constraints in the execution of motor movements, there is likely minimal DOF in the relative timing of prosodic and segmental events at the level of articulatory control.