The impact of shared knowledge on speakers' prosody

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Cognitive Science
• Speech Communication

Background:

• Understanding how shared knowledge influences spoken language is crucial for effective communication.
• Prosody, encompassing pitch and rhythm, plays a key role in conveying information and adapting to listeners.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how differing knowledge states between interlocutors affect speakers' prosodic variations.
• To examine whether speakers adjust global prosody (pitch range, speech rate) and local prosody (prosodic phrasing) based on shared or unshared knowledge.

Main Methods:

• An interactive task where French speakers gave object-placement instructions.
• Manipulation of shared versus unshared object knowledge and referent informational status.
• Analysis of global prosodic variations (pitch range, speech rate) and local prosodic variations (prosodic phrasing).

Main Results:

• Speakers exhibited slower speech rates and wider pitch ranges in the unshared knowledge condition compared to the shared knowledge condition.
• Speakers did not use prosodic phrasing to encode referent informational status, irrespective of the knowledge condition.
• Speakers successfully tracked addressee knowledge and adapted global prosody accordingly.

Conclusions:

• Speakers adjust global prosody to match interlocutor knowledge, demonstrating audience design.
• Increased cognitive load from managing differing knowledge states may inhibit the use of local prosodic cues for informational status.
• Interaction dynamics involve a balance between audience adaptation and cognitive constraints affecting speech production.