Only Prosody? Only Prosody?: Perception of speech segmentation in Kabyle and Hebrew

en collaboration avec Mettouchi A., Silber-Varod, V., Izre'el S. International audience The aim of the present study is to assess the importance of prosody in the perceptual delimitation of “units” for the spoken language, by resorting to experiments involving non-speakers of the language, filtered speech, and automatic segmentation by the software ANALOR. The three experiments test in various ways the lack of access to semantic and syntactic information, as opposed to the expert's segmentation. Results show that quantitatively stronger prosodic cues are needed for informants without access to the syntax-semantics of the sample, especially when they are non-speakers. The analysis also suggests the existence of both universal and language-specific prosodic cues.