About theee hesitant voice: Acoustic and functional analysis of prolongations in Italian spontaneous speech

The identification of prolongations is a non-trivial operation generally based on a pragmatic approach linked to the perception of their duration markedness. Also, prolongation studies mostly concerned duration, pitch, and segmental content. Hence, this study investigates the contribution of other acoustic parameters to distinguishing prolonged segments and whether (and how) specific functions associable with prolongations affect their phonetic realisation. The analysis shows that acoustic parameters such as duration, intensity, HNR, jitter and shimmer characterize and distinguish the portion of the segment contextually identifiable as a marked prolongation from the one identifiable as unmarkedly part of the lexical element. In addition, phonetic-prosodic features have been observed to correlate with functional differences, thus supporting the idea that prolongations play a role in marking discourse.