口语句子的韵律边界：窥探言语理解的秘窗

韵律边界加工与言语理解紧密相关, 最近十几年来逐渐成为心理学和语言学的研究焦点。韵律系统包含若干由小到大的韵律单位, 不同单位的韵律成分其边界强度不同, 表现在音高、延宕和停顿三个声学线索上的参数也不同。句子的听力理解过程中, 听话人运用声学线索感知权重策略对韵律边界的声学线索进行加工。从神经层面上来看, 对于韵律边界的加工, 大脑显示出独立且特异性的神经机制。韵律边界的加工能力在婴儿出生后随年龄的增长而发展, 到了老年阶段则逐渐退化, 而且似乎能够对二语迁移。未来, 需要扩大对韵律边界声学表现的考查范围, 进一步明确韵律边界的加工过程, 进一步厘清韵律边界加工和句法加工之间的关系, 进一步关注二语者韵律边界加工能力的发展。

Prosodic boundaries in speech:A window to spoken language comprehension

The perception of prosodic boundaries is critical to spoken language comprehension,and it has become a primary research topic among psychologists and psycholinguists in the past decade.Utterances are chunked into prosodic units of different strengths.The boundaries between prosodic units are mainly signaled by acoustic cues like pitch change,final lengthening,and pause.Previous cognitive,linguistic,developmental,and neuroimaging studies have significantly advanced our understanding of the processing of prosodic boundaries.We now know that listeners use a perceptual weighting strategy to process prosodic boundary cues,and there are specific brain mechanisms for prosodic boundary processing.The ability to processing prosodic boundaries steadily develops with age in young children and transfers to a second language,but it generally decreases with age in older adults.Future studies should expand the investigation of prosodic boundaries to more pragmatic genres and focus on revealing the cognitive mechanisms underlying prosodic boundary processing,the relationship between prosodic boundary and syntax processing,and the development of prosodic boundary perception in second language learners.