Suprasegmental characteristics of speech produced during simultaneous communication by inexperienced signers.

This study investigated suprasegmental variables of syllable stress and intonation contours in contextual speech produced during simultaneous communication (SC) by inexperienced signers. Ten hearing inexperienced sign language users were recorded under SC and speech-alone (SA) conditions speaking a set of sentences containing stressed versus unstressed versions of the same syllables and a set of sentences containing interrogative versus declarative versions of the same words. Results indicated longer sentence durations for SC than SA for all speech materials.