Recognizing phrase and utterance as prosodic units in non-tonal dialects of Kammu

This paper presents a study of prosodic phrasing in a non-tonal dialect of Kammu, a MonKhmer language spoken in Northern Laos. Prosodic phrasing is seen as correlated with syntactic and informational structures, and the description is made referring to these two levels. The material investigated comprises sentences of different lengths and syntactic structures, uttered by seven male speakers. It is found that, based on prosodic cues, the distinction between prosodic utterance and prosodic phrase can be made. Prosodic phrase is signaled by a sequence of low + high pitch while the right edge of the prosodic utterance gets low pitch. This low terminal is replaced by a high terminal in expressive speech. The study is performed using elicited speech.