The influence of syntactic segmentation on perceived stress

Chomsky and Halle (1968) claim that the stress and intonation of an utterance are not determined solely by physical properties of the acoustic signal but are also influenced by the syntactic organization of the utterance. Strong support for their contention has been obtained by presenting listeners with a continuously repeated string of monosyllabic words. Such sequences undergo spontaneous perceptual re-grouping sometimes producing strings with different syntactic organizations; such syntactic changes are accompanied by immediate and dramatic changes in apparent stress and intonation although the physical signal itself never varies.