About good and bad prosody

Not all speakers are equally good. For instance, at a scientific conference where one can witness many different speakers, there typically tend to be presenters who are engaging, whereas others are boring. The difference in speaking style between good and bad speakers may be partly related to differences in the way they supplement their utterances with appropriate prosodic structures. In this talk, I will discuss research we did on the extent to which the goodness of a speaking style depends on both functional and formal properties of prosody. The first part of my talk will zoom in on the extent to which quality differences relate to differences in pitch accent distribution. The second part discusses joint work with Constantijn Kaland on the perceived quality of variation in speech rhythm.