The present study explored the acoustic characteristics ofprosodic cues that indicate a speaker’s reluctance when giving permissionor agreement using a single word (“okay”). Eight speakers (fourmale, four female) produced the recorded materials that were subsequentlyvalidated through a listening experiment using 12 normal-hearinglisteners. Acoustic analyses revealed that significantly longer wordduration was the cue used most consistently across speakers to communicatereluctance. Voice quality, fundamental voice frequency, and intensitycues also differed significantly between the two prosodicconditions, but the manner in which these cues were applied variedgreatly across speakers.
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