ABSTRACT
Prosody is the music of speech. It encompasses the full range of the aural signal in human speech, including frequency, pitch, intonation, loudness, rhythm, duration, pauses, and phrasing. It includes any individual spectral irregularities present in speech, such as the dysfluencies 'um' or 'er', misspeaks, stumbles, or dropped sounds. Prosody provides language-enhancing information, supporting words, grammar, syntax, and semantic meaning with varying degrees of clarification. Prosody provides paralinguistic cues -- those outside of language -- to a listener's ears. Paralinguistic cues include emotional and expressive information that serves to complete the context of an utterance. The meaning of a message may be obscured when speakers use unfamiliar prosodie speech patterns. On the other hand, prosody may contain sufficient intentional force to convey a message even when language is garbled.
