PROSODIC UNITS AS LANGUAGE PROCESSING UNITS

Language processing requires the organization of a complex physical pattern into a memory representation which captures the meaning relations intended in the utterance. Theories of language processing have focussed on the structure of syntax and semantics as the underlying organization of memory representations. Although research on prosodic information in spoken language has demonstrated that prosody can affect language processing, theories have usually treated prosodic information as a source of cues in developing a syntactic or semantic representation.;Two experiments are presented in support of this view. The first experiment compared listening comprehension time for sentences with good and poor prosodic information. The pattern of results was best explained by assuming an internal representation of the prosodic contours. The second experiment found similar effects for temporally organized sentences in reading. Two pilot experiments were conducted to test a specific representation model. These experiments served to evaluate some techniques for further research in auditory language processing.;This thesis proposes that prosody occupies a distinct level of representation in the language processing system. The organization of the prosodic representation determines the availability of information in memory as well as the processing units for higher levels of analysis.