Temporal interpretation

The first step in phonetic interpretation of a prosodic structure, is to assign a temporal interpretation to each node in the structure. This is done by specifying rules for:

• durations for constituents which are treated as terminals in the phonetic interpretation
• overlap between adjacent nodes in the prosodic structure

Across syllables, a left-to-right model is used:

• the duration of a constituent is the sum of the durations assigned to the daughter constituents, minus the overlap specified at the boundary

Within syllables, a coproduction model is used:

• the duration of a constituent equals the duration assigned to the prosodic head of that constituent
• weak nodes are overlaid on their strong sister nodes at the left or right edge, depending on whether the configuration is weak-strong or strong-weak, respectively

In the coproduction model the following rules apply:

• if no duration is specified for a weak node, the duration is equal to the amount of overlap between the weak node and its strong sister node
• if no overlap is specified between a weak and a strong node, the amount of overlap equals the duration of the weak node
• a negative amount of overlap specifies the amount of non-overlap between a weak node and its strong sister node

Example

Duration:

Nu => 600.
   E => 250.
   F => 200.

Overlap:

On + Ri => 200.
   A + B => -80.
   E + F => 120.

Analysis Temporal interpretation

Note: these rules are overly simplistic: normally, rules for duration and overlap make use of feature values encoded on a constituent; also, we don't normally use the category labels A, B, C, D, E and F.