Head Movement Correlates of Juncture and Stress at Sentence Level

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Abstract
Body movement during speech has been recognized as closely relating to suprasegmental features, but little evidence has been offered to support this thesis, probably for lack of adequate techniques. The present study investigated this issue by continuously recording, with a polarized-light goniometer, movement of the head in four subjects engaged in conversation. Rapid movements were found to indicate stress, while juncture involved contrasting ordinary movements with stillness. This was believed to indicate that the dissipative structure coordinating speech resorts to body movement in regulating high energies, and that prosodic features may accentuate inner continuity by varying smoothly towards terminal juncture.