Speech Units Workshop

This presentation discusses how to experimentally collect data for a detailed analysis of a word prosodic system. Phonological analyses of word prosodic systems have been part of traditional grammar writing. Although qualitative analyses may provide a first insight into the word prosodic system of a language, they often lack the necessary detail. Field phonetic studies have shown that impressionistic accounts of naïve listeners can lead to misguided analyses (Tabain et al 2014, Torres and Fletcher 2022). As an example, there seems to have been an overabundance of reported secondary stresses which are not identified in acoustic analyses. To avoid these pitfalls there are some steps that can be undertaken. A protocol for data collection will be presented together with examples of how it was implemented.