Prosodic Breaks

Pauses or breaks in the flow of communication that convey grammatical, syntactic, or emphatic meaning. In sign language, prosodic breaks occur between signs and serve functions similar to intonation and pausing in spoken language — marking sentence boundaries, separating clauses and phrases, and signalling emphasis or topic shifts. The length, placement, and frequency of these breaks are critical parameters in sign language animation, as they directly affect the understandability and perceived naturalness of synthesised signing.