Prosodic Analysis of the Production of They/Them Pronouns (2024)

Undergraduate: Gabrielle Garner

Faculty Advisor: Jennifer Arnold
Department: Psychology and Neuroscience

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Prosody refers to the relative prominence within an utterance, including the stress, rhythm, and fluency. Prosody can be used in part as an indication of processing and production ease. In this study, measures of perceptual and acoustic prominence were used to compare the prosodic prominence of singular they as a personal pronoun, plural they, and binary personal pronouns. These measures included four sets of perceptual ratings that were averaged together and analyses in Praat that assessed the duration, intensity, and pitch. For the comparisons between singular they as a personal pronoun and plural they, there were no significant differences across any measures. For the comparisons between singular they and binary pronouns (he and she), there were significant differences, but the results were inconsistent. For the perceptual prominence rating, singular they was rated as slightly more prominent than the binary pronouns, which would indicate that singular they might be slightly more prosodically prominent. Acoustic analysis also indicated that singular they had a higher intensity. However, the binary pronouns had a longer average duration and a higher average pitch, which would point to a higher level of prosodic prominence. Since there were no significant differences between singular they as a personal pronoun and plural they, it is also possible that prominence differences between singular they as a personal pronoun and the binary personal pronouns could be attributed to word difference. Overall, there were limited and inconsistent prosodic differences between singular they as a personal pronoun, plural they, and binary personal pronouns.