In:In Search of Basic Units of Spoken Language: A corpus-driven approach
Edited by Shlomo Izre'el, Heliana Mello, Alessandro Panunzi and Tommaso Raso
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 94] 2020
► pp. 349–358
Chapter 4Basic units of speech segmentation
Published online: 18 June 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.94.13mit
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.94.13mit
Abstract
The segmentation of the monologue Navy and the
dialogue Hearts described here is based solely on the acoustic signal. The
unit of reference is the intonation unit as defined in the work of Chafe, characterized by a
single, coherent pitch contour. Units defined by pitch often coincide with intensity,
pauses, rhythm, and phonation type, though not always. In English they typically begin with
a pitch reset followed by declination. Series of intonation units often form larger prosodic
sentences, which can show an overall declination in pitch, often with intermediate pitch
resets at the beginning of each unit. As shown by Chafe (1987, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1998, 2000,
2018), each unit tends to convey one new idea or
focus of consciousness. They often correlate with syntactic constituents or sentences,
though not always.
Keywords: intonation unit, prosodic phrase, pitch reset, declination, prosodic sentences
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