Download or read book The Intonation of Interrogation in Palermo Italian written by Martine Grice and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2017-10-10 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Palermo Italian yes-no interrogatives, if the last syllable of a phrase is unstressed, the nuclear pitch contour is rising-falling, whereas if it is stressed, the contour is simply rising. Such context-dependent variation cannot be adequately accounted for within a British-style approach to intonation. By contrast, autosegmental pitch accent studies of intonation, where nuclear pitch configurations are expressed in terms of H(igh) and L(ow) tones, are shown to offer the flexibility necessary to do so. These tones are incorporated into a hierarchical structure in which they have either an accentual or a primarily delimitative function. In the former case, tones are part of a Pitch Accent which has an association to a syllable; in the latter case, tones are associated to nodes representing higher prosodic constituents, either the intermediate phrase or the intonation phrase, and are realised as boundary tones. Building on current analyses, a model is proposed in which tones in the Pitch Accent are also hierarchically structured, involving two levels: the Supertone and Tone. This extended Pitch Accent structure not only explains apparent inconsistencies in phonetic alignment in Palermo Italian, but also accounts for equivalent consistency in alignment in English. In addition it allows leading tones in Palermo Italian to be treated in a qualitatively different way from leading tones in English. The Palermo Italian interrogative marker consists of a L*+H Pitch Accent. There is no paradigmatic contrast on the intermediate phrase boundary tone (it is always L) which means that its function is purely delimitative. This tone is only fully realised when a postaccentual syllable is available to carry it; technically, it requires a secondary attachment to a syllable. The absence of the falling part of the L*+HL (L) configuration in phrases with no postaccentual syllable is thus explained.
Download or read book L2 Spanish and Italian intonation written by Andrea Pešková and published by Language Science Press. This book was released on 2023-10-31 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The main aim of this book is to contribute to our understanding of the acquisition of second language intonation, by comparing Czech learners of Spanish with German learners of Spanish and Czech learners of Italian. By means of a large production database, the study seeks to uncover how L1-to-L2 intonational transfer works and what role prosodic (dis)similarities between languages play. Contrary to most previous research, the work presents an original multidirectional cross-linguistic comparison and examines different types of sentence, such as neutral and non-neutral statements, yes/no questions, wh-questions, exclamatives and vocatives. The findings reveal positive and negative transfer from L1 to L2, and the formation of mixed patterns as well as native-like patterns, which are mainly constrained by linguistic factors such as the type of sentence and the position of the tonal event in the utterance. The results are discussed within Mennen’s (2015) L2 Intonation Learning theory and lead to the formulation of a Developmental L2 Intonation Hypothesis that makes several generalizations to characterize interlanguage intonation. This volume not only represents a step forward in the study of the acquisition of L2 intonation in general but also offers valuable findings that can be directly or indirectly applied in the classroom and will hopefully inspire further research.
Download or read book Prosodic Detail in Neapolitan Italian written by Francesco Cangemi and published by Language Science Press. This book was released on 2014-09-17 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent findings on phonetic detail have been taken as supporting exemplar-based approaches to prosody. Through four experiments on both production and perception of both melodic and temporal detail in Neapolitan Italian, we show that prosodic detail is not incompatible with abstractionist approaches either. Specifically, we suggest that the exploration of prosodic detail leads to a refined understanding of the relationships between the richly specified and continuous varying phonetic information on one side, and coarse phonologically structured contrasts on the other, thus offering insights on how pragmatic information is conveyed by prosody.
Download or read book Variation and Change in Spoken and Written Discourse written by Julia Bamford and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2013-10-31 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on aspects of variation and change in language use in spoken and written discourse on the basis of corpus analyses, providing new descriptive insights, and new methods of utilising small specialized corpora for the description of language variation and change. The sixteen contributions included in this volume represent a variety of diverse views and approaches, but all share the common goal of throwing light on a crucial dimension of discourse: the dialogic interactivity between the spoken and written. Their foci range from papers addressing general issues related to corpus analysis of spoken dialogue to papers focusing on specific cases employing a variety of analytical tools, including qualitative and quantitative analysis of small and large corpora. The present volume constitutes a highly valuable tool for applied linguists and discourse analysts as well as for students, instructors and language teachers.
Download or read book Intonation in Romance written by Sónia Frota and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2015-06-04 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers the first comprehensive description of the prosody of nine Romance languages that takes into account internal dialectal variation. Teams of experts examine the prosody of Catalan, French, Friulian, Italian, Occitan, Portuguese, Romanian, Sardinian, and Spanish using the Autosegmental Metrical framework of intonational phonology and the Tones and Breaks Indices (ToBI) transcription system. The chapters all share a common methodology, based on a common Discourse Completion Task questionnaire, and provide extensive empirical data. The authors then analyse how intonation patterns work together with other grammatical means such as syntactic constructions and discourse particles in the linguistic marking of a varied set of sentence types and pragmatic meanings across Romance languages. The ToBI prosodic systems and annotations proposed for each language are based both on a phonological analysis of the target language as well as on the shared goal of using ToBI analyses that are comparable across Romance languages. This book will pave the way for more systematic typological comparisons of prosody across both Romance and non-Romance languages.
Download or read book Fundamentals of Verbal and Nonverbal Communication and the Biometric Issue written by A. Esposito and published by IOS Press. This book was released on 2007-05-22 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The main theme of this publication is the fundamental features of verbal and nonverbal communication and their relationships with the identification of a person, his/her socio-cultural background and personal traits. The problem of understanding human behaviour in terms of personal traits, and the possibility of an algorithmic implementation that exploits personal traits to identify a person unambiguously, are among the great challenges of modern science and technology. On the one hand, there is the theoretical question of what makes each individual unique among all others that share similar traits, and what makes a culture unique among various cultures. On the other hand, there is the technological need to be able to protect people from individual disturbance and dangerous behaviour that could damage an entire community. As regards to the problem of understanding human behaviour, one of the most interesting research areas is that related to human interaction and face-to-face communication. It is in this context that knowledge is shared and personal traits acquire their significance.
Download or read book The Intonation of Givenness written by Stefan Baumann and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2012-02-14 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses students and researchers of both phonetics and phonology, and the semantics and pragmatics of discourse. It employs an autosegmental-metrical model of intonation to investigate the marking of aspects of information structure, concentrating on the Given-New dimension. It begins with an overview of the state of the art in the areas of intonation and information structure, and, since the term 'Givenness' has been used in the literature in diverging ways, provides a model of 'Givenness proper', focussing on the cognitive states of discourse referents, and how these states are expressed through the choice of words and their prosody. The empirical evidence provided here is based on German. It comprises the analysis of a read corpus and two perception experiments which show that the dichotomy of 'accented' versus 'uncaccented' corresponding to 'New' versus 'Given' information is inadequate. In fact, there is evidence that a range of pitch accent types (including deaccentuation) can be mapped onto the gradient scale of Givenness degrees, with the pitch height on the accented syllable being the determining factor.
Download or read book Information Structure and its Interfaces written by Lunella Mereu and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2009-02-26 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The volume presents recent results in the field of Information Structure based on research on Italian and Italian dialects, and on further studies on several typologically different languages. The central idea is that Information Structure is not an exclusive matter of syntax but an interface issue which involves the interplay of at least the phonological, morpho-syntactic and semantic-pragmatic levels of analysis. In addition, the volume is based on the study of actual language use and it adopts a cross-linguistic point of view.
Download or read book Intonation written by A. Botinis and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ANTONIS BOTINIS 1. 1 Background This introduction provides essential information about the structure and the objects of study of this volume. Following the introduction, fourteen papers which represent current research on intonation are organised into five thematic sections: (I) Overview of Intonation, (II) Prominence and Focus, (III) Boundaries and Discourse, (IV) Intonation Modelling, and (V) Intonation Technology. Within the sections the papers are arranged thematically, although several papers which deal with various aspects of intonation and prosody are basically intersectional. As the title indicates, "Intonation: Analysis, Modelling and Technology" is a contribution to the study of prosody, with major emphasis on intonation. Intonation and tonal themes are thus the central object of the volume, although temporal and dynamic aspects are also taken into consideration by a good number of papers. Although tonal and prosodic distinctions have been dealt with throughout man's literate history with reference to the study of language, for example by classical philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle, it is in recent decades that we have witnessed the most fertile growth in intonation studies, as with experimental phonetics and speech technology in general. As Rossi (this volume) points out, intonation research really began to blossom in the sixties with a multi fold increase in prosodic studies, reflected in contributions to the International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS), and in the international literature.
Download or read book Towards a New Standard written by Massimo Cerruti and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2017-01-11 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In many European languages the National Standard Variety is converging with spoken, informal, and socially marked varieties. In Italian this process is giving rise to a new standard variety called Neo-standard Italian, which partly consists of regional features. This book contributes to current research on standardization in Europe by offering a comprehensive overview of the re-standardization dynamics in Italian. Each chapter investigates a specific dynamic shaping the emergence of Neo-standard Italian and Regional Standard Varieties, such as the acceptance of previously non-standard features, the reception of Old Italian features excluded from the standard variety, the changing standard language ideology, the retention of features from Italo-Romance dialects, the standardization of patterns borrowed from English, and the developmental tendencies of standard Italian in Switzerland. The contributions investigate phonetic/phonological, prosodic, morphosyntactic, and lexical phenomena, addressed by several empirical methodologies and theoretical vantage points. This work is of interest to scholars and students working on language variation and change, especially those focusing on standard languages and standardization dynamics.
Download or read book Tonal placement in Tashlhiyt written by Timo B. Roettger and published by Language Science Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In most languages, words contain vowels, elements of high intensity with rich harmonic structure, enabling the perceptual retrieval of pitch. By contrast, in Tashlhiyt, a Berber language, words can be composed entirely of voiceless segments. When an utterance consists of such words, the phonetic opportunity for the execution of intonational pitch movements is exceptionally limited. This book explores in a series of production and perception experiments how these typologically rare phonotactic patterns interact with intonational aspects of linguistic structure. It turns out that Tashlhiyt allows for a tremendously flexible placement of tonal events. Observed intonational structures can be conceived of as different solutions to a functional dilemma: The requirement to realise meaningful pitch movements in certain positions and the extent to which segments lend themselves to a clear manifestation of these pitch movements.
Download or read book Intonational Phonology written by D. Robert Ladd and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1996-12-12 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intonation is a subject of increasing importance in fields from syntax to speech recognition. D. Robert Ladd provides an exceptionally clear presentation of the key ideas of the influential autosegmental-metrical theory of intonational phonology associated with the work of Janet Pierrehumbert. He outlines the evidence for the theory's basic tenets and relates them to the ideas of competing approaches in a way that will allow sceptics to reach an informed opinion and he presents a wealth of new material on the cross-language comparison of intonation couched in autosegmental-metrical terms. He also draws attention to problems in Pierrehumbert's version of the autosegmental-metrical theory, and offers some theoretical proposals of his own. This book will appeal to phonologists and phoneticians as an original contribution to the debates it discusses, and will be welcomed by a wide range of students and researchers as an ideal overview of recent work.
Download or read book The Phonology of Tone and Intonation written by Carlos Gussenhoven and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-07 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher Description
Download or read book Contemporary Approaches to Romance Linguistics written by Julie Auger and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of twenty articles, selected from the 33rd annual Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages held at Indiana University in 2003, presents current theoretical approaches to a variety of issues in Romance linguistics. Invited speakers Luigi Burzio and José Ignacio Hualde contribute papers on the paradigmatics and syntagmatics of Italian verbal inflection and comparative/diachronic Romance intonation, respectively. The other papers, whose authors include both well-known researchers and younger scholars, represent such areas as French syntax (both synchronic and diachronic), second language acquisition (Spanish & English), Spanish intonation, phonology, syntax, and semantics, Italian semantics, Romanian morphology and syntax, Catalan phonology and morphology, and Galician phonology (two papers). The volume is rounded out by three explicitly comparative studies, one on proto-Romance phonology, one on microvariation in Romance syntax, and a third addressing syntactic microvariation among varieties of French and French-based creoles. Frameworks represented include Optimality Theory, Minimalism, and Construction Grammar.
Download or read book Prosody and Focus in European Portuguese written by Sonia Frota and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-01-21 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work is an investigation of the relation between prosodic structure, intonational structure and (some instances of) focus realisation in European Portuguese (EP). The prosodic account has been developed within the relation-based framework of prosodic hierarchy theory and the autosegmental-metrical theory of intonational phonology. The approach is both theoretical and laboratory phonology research. Based on the analysis of various types of evidence (i.e. Gandhi processes, rhythmic, intentional and boundary strength phenomena), issues such as prosodic layering and the effect of branchingness and phrase length on prosodic phrasing are discussed. Specifically, I-recursion in the form of restricted Compound Prosodic Domains is argued for. Moreover, the fact that the diverse manifestations of prosodic structure point to the same hierarchical organization of the flow of speech into Fs and Is crucially assigns to the prosodic hierarchy a pivotal place in phrasal phonlogy. Attention is paid, furthermore, to aspects of intonational structure like tonal association and alignment, the characterization of leading and trailing tones, and pitch accents structure. It is argued that the HL accents of EP are 'real' bitonal events whose features favour a hierarchical-structured analysis of pitch accent structure. With regard to focus, it is shown that in EP focus is phonologically expressed by means of stress and accents effects and crucially not by means of phrasing effects. And crucially not by means of phrasing effects. Of particular importance is the selection of a special pitch accent to convey (early or late) focus, and the implications it has or the standard positional account of prominence and the stress reversal analysis of prominence patterns. Throughout the work, the EP findings, as well as the proposals set forth, are discussed from a cross-linguistic perspective, with special reference to languages like English, Dutch, German, different varieties of Italian, and Bengali. Also relevant to a general understanding of the prosodic reflexes of focus are languages like Hungarian, Korean, Basque and Wolof.
Download or read book The Intonational Phonology of Swabian and Upper Saxon written by Frank Kügler and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2011-07-11 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The study employs an autosegmental-metrical model of intonation to propose an intonational grammar of Swabian and Upper Saxon German, respectively. The analysis is guided by the assumption that each dialect exhibits a specific distinct intonation. The phonological analysis is comparative in nature: the implementation of accents are compared between the dialects in terms of tonal alignment and excursion. In fact, the phonetic data present evidence for the phonological analysis in that the individual tonal categories differ significantly from each other. In addition, a functional analysis of the intonation contours provides further evidence for the phonological analysis. Based on the assumption that nuclear contours convey intonational meaning, these meanings are analysed and compared. A certain meaning can be attributed to intonation contours that differ phonologically between the two dialects. However, the general shape of contours and its association with meaning has been proved to be identical in the two dialects and compared to a similar analysis of intonational meaning of British English. This comprehensive study of dialect intonation contributes to improve our understanding of intonational phonology.
