The effects of prosodic cues on disambiguation in Persian

The effects of prosodic cues on disambiguating Persian ambiguous expressions were examined in a production and perception experiment. Two types of ambiguous strings were studied. Expressions Type 1 were phonologically ambiguous three-syllable strings which would yield a one-word reading if the lexical boundary would fall at the end of the whole string، and a two-word reading if the boundary would fall after the first syllable. Expressions Type 2 were syntactically ambiguous noun phrases allowing two different interpretations based on the position of the intermediate syntactic boundary. Three quantifiable phonetic properties of prosody، namely F0، syllable and word duration and pause duration were measured and compared across the two readings of the target expressions. Results of the production experiment showed that speakers significantly altered their production of the utterances by varying all three prosodic cues in ways consistent with the intended instruction. Results of the perception experiment، however، showed that F0 excursions provided a more reliable perceptual cue to disambiguation in Persian than durational cues.