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Individual strategies in multimodal hyperarticulation

Authors:
Gregori, A.

Year / Status:
2026

Journal / Venue:
Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2026

DOI / URL:
10.21437/SpeechProsody.2026-119

Abstract

Hyperarticulation refers to speakers adapting their articulation to the communicative needs of their interlocutor. Thus, speakers enhance specific features to highlight elements or hypoarticulate and reduce them if the context allows. This was found for prosody, and recently also in prosody-gesture interaction [1], licensed by focus and background contexts. These findings show that hyperarticulation is not unimodal but can be found in multiple modalities. Further investigating the connection between modalities, this study addresses whether individual speakers use hyperarticulation strategies similarly to mark focus, whether they combine strategies or whether they prefer one to highlight information in focus. Drawing on data from [1], individual hyperarticulation strategies are examined in a German conversational corpus. Results reveal that multimodal hyperarticulation is more stable across speakers than prosodic hyperarticulation is, as most speakers use the multimodal strategy, while less than 50% use the prosodic strategy. Importantly however, all speakers use at least one strategy to hyperarticulate in focus, with the modality strategies making up for each other if not both show hyperarticulation. This reinforces the conclusion that hyperarticulation is a multimodal phenomenon and that both unimodal and multimodal hyperarticulation strategies are needed to establish a comprehensive view on hyperarticulation in focus including individual strategies.