Repetition is easy: Why repeated referents have reduced prominence

Abstract

The repetition and the predictability of a word in a conversation are two factors that are believed to affect whether it is emphasized: Predictable, repeated words are less acoustically prominent than unpredictable, new words. However, because predictability and repetition are correlated, it is unclear whether speakers lengthen unpredictable words to facilitate comprehension or whether this lengthening is the result of difficulties in accessing a new (nonrepeated) lexical item. In this study, we investigated the relationship between acoustic prominence, repetition, and predictability in a description task. In Experiment 1, we found that repeated referents are produced with reduced prominence, even when these referents are unexpected. In Experiment 2, we found that predictability and repetition both have independent effects on duration and intensity. However, word duration was primarily determined by repetition, and intensity was primarily determined by predictability. The results are most consistent with an account in which multiple cognitive factors influence the acoustic prominence of a word.

Thematic role predictability and planning affect word duration

“…Utterance planning is likely cascaded, such that the speaker does not need to plan the entire message before beginning linguistic formulation for some elements (Morsella & Miozzo, 2002). Thus, earlier message selection leads to faster lexical retrieval, which predicts fluent delivery and shorter word durations (e.g., Bell et al, 2009;Lam & Watson, 2010;Watson et al, 2015). In sum, our findings provide strong support for the hypothesis that acoustic reduction is influenced by message and utterance planning.…”

“…When the speaker heard the prime, they both initiated their description more quickly (shorter planning time) and spoke the target word more quickly. This is consistent with the hypothesis that the ease of planning the target word influences the time needed to plan the word, and also affects the speed of producing the word itself (see also Arnold & Watson, 2015;Lam & Watson, 2010;Watson et al, 2015). Thus, difficulty in retrieving a word often (but not always) results in both longer latencies and slower pronunciation time.…”

“…This supports the idea that lexical exposure facilitates subsequent production. Lexical facilitation may also stem from referential predictability (Lam & Watson, 2010), leading to faster utterance formulation, more fluent delivery, and shorter durations.…”

“…Grammatical role is one example of this, where entities in the subject or first-mentioned position are more likely to be re-mentioned (Arnold, 1998). Repeated referents have reduced prominence (Lam & Watson, 2010), and given referents (i.e., those that are shared by speaker and listener, are currently foregrounded, and have contextual support) have shorter duration (Fowler & Housum, 1987). Another example from Watson et al (2008) showed that the probability in context matters: In a tic-tac-toe game played between partners on a 3 × 3 grid, moves that are predictable (winning moves or blocking a winning move) are more accessible and cell number referents are spoken in a shorter duration than moves that are less predictable ("Put the blue balloon in One").…”

On the notion of salience in spoken discourse - prominence cues shaping discourse structure and comprehension

“…54 Recent studies (Lam & Watson, 2010Watson, 2010) aimed at teasing apart the role of prominence cues associated with production processes compared to discourse processes. For English, Lam and Watson (2010) found intensity increases as markers of discourse relations (i.e., unexpected mentions of referents had higher intensity), while word duration was more dependent on production constraints (i.e., repeated occurrences of referring expressions were shorter, see also, Bard et al, 2000;Lam & Watson, 2014).…”