Investigating the Holistic Measures of Prosody – A Qualitative Analysis

Aliel Cunningham

Purdue University

Abstract: Speech prosody is a multi-faceted dimension of speech which can be measured and analyzed in a variety of ways. Those who examine the nature of prosody are quick to recognize what Cutler, Dahan, & Donselaar (1997) describe as prosody’s “indeterminate nature and [its] complex interdependent relationships with other linguistic elements”. In this study, the speech prosody of Mandarin L1 speakers, English L2 speakers, and English L1 speakers was assessed by trained raters who listened to sound clips of the speakers responding to a graph prompt and reading a short passage. In order to eliminate other factors that might distract from assessing only the prosodic ‘goodness’ of a given speaker, the sound clips were acoustically filtered (using a STOP-Hann band filter) to attenuate all frequencies 500 Hz and above. This cut-off was used with the aim of preserving prosodic characteristics without including interference from segmental features where possible. The raters who participated in this study were trained to use the OEPT scale to rate holistic speech in an unfiltered condition so this study employs an adapted version of that scale. The levels of the adapted scale were as follows: (1) – L1 Mandarin Prosody, (3) L2 Novice English Prosody, (5) L2 Intermediate English Prosody, (7) Advanced English Prosody, (9) L1 English Prosody. For each sound clip, the raters were asked to assign one of these proficiency levels and describe in qualitative terms why they choose that score. This presentation will discuss which indicators appeared more frequently in the qualitative descriptions, an analysis of different approaches to the task, possible implications of the findings, as well as future research needed in the area of L2 speech prosody assessment.