This article is an empirical examination of prosodic correlates used to demarcate discourse units in a collection of Diné bizaad narratives. This study builds on observations of prosodic patterns in related Dene languages and evaluates the presence of hypothesized correlates of following pause, syllable lengthening, pitch lowering, and pitch reset at boundaries for intonation units and syntactic sentences. Based on an analysis of nine narratives, I find that the Diné narrator marks the majority of her intonation units with a following pause, as well as with significant rhyme lengthening in the final syllable and a slight, but significant pitch reset at the beginning of the unit. The results further show that the narrator marks syntactic sentences with longer following pauses and pitch lowering on unit-final syllables along with a unit-initial pitch reset. Together, these results present empirical evidence for prosodic marking of discourse units in Diné bizaad connected speech.

中文翻译：

---

Diné Bizaad 叙事中的韵律：声学相关性的定量研究

本文是对用于划分 Diné bizaad 叙事集合中的话语单元的韵律关联的实证检验。本研究建立在对相关 Dene 语言中韵律模式的观察基础上，并评估了以下假设的相关性的存在，即后续停顿、音节延长、音调降低以及语调单元和句法句子边界处的音调重置。基于对九个叙述的分析，我发现 Diné 叙述者在她的大部分语调单元中标记了以下停顿，以及在最后一个音节中显着的押韵加长和在开始时轻微但显着的音高重置单元。结果进一步表明，叙述者在单元尾音节上标记了更长的后续停顿和音调降低以及单元首尾音高重置的句法句子。总之，这些结果为 Diné bizaad 关联语音中话语单元的韵律标记提供了经验证据。