This study examined durational cues at discourse boundaries in spontaneous speech in Taiwan Southern Min (TSM) using a two-hour monologue corpus contributed by four elderly female speakers from the same dialectal region. Discourse labeling was done following the method of Fon et al. (2011). Two durational cues were examined: syllable duration and post-syllable pause duration. Results showed that the lengthening of final and penultimate syllable was a very robust cue for discourse boundaries. It was also found that the postboundary syllables underwent shortening. As for boundary strength, the duration of pauses at discourse boundaries was found to be a strong indicator for boundary hierarchy.

Index Terms: boundary cues, hierarchical structure, spontaneous speech, Taiwan Southern Min