Emphasis by Pausing

The study concerns how prosody, including pauses, is used to give extra weight to focused words when repeated with successively more emphasis. The analysis is based on the same three-word phrase produced in two different communicative contexts, one a dialogue interaction and one a reading-aloud situation. Results show greater adjustments in the dialogue context. When emphasis was increased, there were more pauses and longer word durations than when words were just read aloud. F0 maxima in the words, however, were less affected by emphasis. These findings are seen in the light of different demands of the two communicative situations as well as different production constraints on F0 and duration.