Speech prosody

Abstract

This critical review is mainly concerned with methodological issues in prosody research, with the aim to highlight progress toward developing predictive knowledge about prosody. The review shows that there has been a steady progression in terms of methodological rigor as the field goes through major methodological trends that can be described as analysis-by-introspection, analysis-by-transcription, analysis-by-hypothesis-testing and analysis-by-modeling. All the major methodologies currently still co-exist and each still has it own merit. But all of them are evaluated in terms of their effectiveness in establishing knowledge that is generalizable. Finally, an emphasis will be made on the need to have much more linking and integration between different subareas of prosody research.