Phonologic representation and speech perception: The role of pause

Abstract

We investigate the perception of pauses at intonational phrase (IP) boundaries in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) and addresses the discussion about the relation between speech production and perception. Twenty adult subjects, native speakers of BP, with no language disorders and no hearing complaints, took part in an experimental pause identification test. We used auditory stimuli in which the IP-boundary was marked by a combination of pause and pitch variation or pitch variation only. The results are the following: (i) when stimuli consisted of a combination of pause with pitch variation in the IP-boundary, pauses were identified significantly (ii) when the stimuli did not have pitch variation on IP-boundaries, pauses were not identified significantly, (iii) when only pitch variation occurred, without pause production, pauses were identified in the tested boundary. These results support the argument that speech perception does not depend entirely on recovering an acoustic pattern and provide evidence for the importance of phonologic representation for the perception and organization of the perceived auditory stimulus. Based on the results, we argue that pause perception would result from the perceptual illusion marked by the combination of different types of linguistic information, at a phonetic-acoustic and representational level.

Keywords

• pause
• prosodic boundary
• intonation
• auditory perception
• Brazilian Portuguese