The application of this framework to the verbatim transcriptions of spoken discourse then provided a detailed analysis in terms of discourse boundaries and important information. The combination of i. the actual prosodic realization by the speakers, and ii. Pauses are important for listeners to decide where boundaries occur in the discourse. To mark important information at the word level, speakers mainly make use of pitch accents. Information that is new to the discourse is realized with a pitch accent more often than information that adds little to the content.
Pitch accents are also indicative for listeners to perceive important information.
This study is of interest to experimental phoneticians, as well as to researchers in the field of discourse studies and pragmatics. General introduction 2. The relation between textual information structure an dperceived prominence in discourse 3. Prosodic speaker chracteristics 4. Prosodic characteristics of discourse boundaries 5.