Skarnitzl Radek, Hledíková Hana
Institute of Phonetics, Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Prague, Czechia.
Department of English Language and ELT Methodology, Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Prague, Czechia.
Front Psychol. 2022 Mar 24;13:857647. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.857647. eCollection 2022.
Prosodic patterning is known to affect the impression that speakers make on their listeners. This study explores prosodic phrasing in good public speakers of American English and Czech. Czech is a West Slavic language whose intonation is reported to be flatter and prosodic phrases longer than in English. We analyzed prosodic characteristics of 10 speakers of Czech and American English who appeared in TED Talks, assuming such appearance to be a mark of a "good speaker." Our objective was to see whether prosodic phrasing will be more similar in these public speeches between the two languages. We measured the length of prosodic phrases, speech rate in each phrase, and pitch range and melodic variability in the entire phrase, as well as in its pre-nuclear and nuclear portion. The number of syllables per phrase was higher in Czech than in English, although phrases were generally very short in both languages. The melodic indicators confirm smaller melodic variability in Czech even in publicly performed TED Talks. Overall, our results show that there are differences between Czech and English prosodic phrasing in good public speakers but that the genre also affects phrasing. Prosodic rendition-especially prosodic phrase length and melodic variability-is therefore a vital, albeit somewhat language-specific aspect of speech performance which public speakers should pay close attention to, both in their native language and in foreign languages.
众所周知，韵律模式会影响说话者给听众留下的印象。本研究探讨了美国英语和捷克语优秀公众演讲者的韵律短语划分。捷克语是一种西斯拉夫语，据报道其语调比英语更平缓，韵律短语也更长。我们分析了10位在TED演讲中出现的捷克语和美国英语演讲者的韵律特征，假定这种亮相是“优秀演讲者”的一个标志。我们的目的是看看在这些公开演讲中，两种语言的韵律短语划分是否会更相似。我们测量了韵律短语的长度、每个短语的语速、整个短语以及其核前部分和核心部分的音高范围和旋律变化。捷克语中每个短语的音节数比英语中多，不过两种语言中的短语通常都很短。旋律指标证实，即使在公开进行的TED演讲中，捷克语的旋律变化也较小。总体而言，我们的结果表明，优秀公众演讲者在捷克语和英语的韵律短语划分上存在差异，但演讲类型也会影响短语划分。因此，韵律表现——尤其是韵律短语长度和旋律变化——是演讲表现中一个至关重要的方面，尽管在某种程度上因语言而异，公众演讲者无论使用母语还是外语都应密切关注这一点。
