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Article published In: Concentric
Vol. 47:2 (2021) ► pp.184–224

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From speech to language

An alternative corpus account of prosodic highlight in continuous speech

 | Tamkang University
 | Academia Sinica
Published online: 17 November 2021
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https://doi.org/10.1075/consl.00027.che
Abstract
This study proposes a novel exploration of perceived prosodic highlights in continuous speech, focusing on the alternative function of indexing and projecting information content deployment in the speech context. Given the assumption that prosodic highlight allocation directly reflects the interlocutors’ information content deployment, this study foregrounds perception-based prominences for indexing both the key information (KEY) and the projector (PJR) that projects the deployment of key/focal information. Two information content planning units (PJR plus its respective projection PJN, and KEY) prompted by prosodic highlights were established, based on quantitative analyses and discriminative acoustic features. Additional analyses confirm a general heavy-to-light information distribution across both units, showcasing that the relative projection trajectory size in the PJR-PJN unit is positively correlated to its position within discourse-prosodic units. Current results, therefore, directly substantiate the cognitive explanation of prosodic projection in speech, as evidence beyond syntactic relationships are drawn and prosodic projection is shown to involve perceived prosodic highlight allocation and information deployment in a fixed pattern. Explorations of prosody-prompted projection shed light on a more comprehensive account of the mechanism behind information planning, hence facilitating a deeper understanding of the composition of context prosody and the derivation of linguistic invariants from speech.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.On projection in previous studies
  • 3.The present study: A preview
  • 4.Speech materials and data pre-processing
    • 4.1The speech data
    • 4.2Data pre-processing and annotations
      • 4.2.1Annotations for discourse-prosodic unit
      • 4.2.2Annotations for perceived prosodic highlight
    • 4.3Categorizing prominence prompted information content
      • 4.3.1Key information (KEY)
      • 4.3.2Projector (PJR plus its respective projection PJN)
      • 4.3.3Referring expression (KEY-REF)
      • 4.3.4Inferred key information (KEY-INF)
  • 5.Analysis I: The information content category
    • 5.1Distribution of information content categories
      • 5.1.1Discussion
    • 5.2Prosodic profiles of KEY and PJR
      • 5.2.1Discussion
    • 5.3Interim summary
    • 5.4PJR-PJN by the discourse-prosodic unit boundaries
      • 5.4.1Discussion
  • 6.Analyses by information planning units: Calculation of emphasis density and their position by discourse-prosodic units
    • 6.1Analysis II: Distribution of emphasis density
      • 6.1.1Emphasis density score calculation
      • 6.1.2Results of emphasis density score calculation
      • 6.1.3Discussions
    • 6.2Analysis III: Locating information planning units by discourse-prosodic units
      • 6.2.1Estimating the average position of information planning units
      • 6.2.2Analysis result
      • 6.2.3Discussions
  • 7.General discussions and summary
    • 7.1On prosodic highlight-prompted information content units
    • 7.2Toward a cognitive significance for prosodic highlight-prompted projection
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
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