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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. 367–382

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Chapter 6
The Moscow approach to local discourse structure

An application to English

 | Institute of Linguistics RAS | Lomonosov Moscow State University
 | Russian State University for the Humanities
 | Russian State University for the Humanities
Published online: 18 June 2020
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.94.15kib
Abstract
This chapter is an exploratory study in which we apply an approach to local discourse structure and prosody, developed for spoken Russian, to English talk. A key conceptual element of our approach is the notion of elementary discourse unit (EDU). EDUs are identified on the basis of prosodic criteria and demonstrate substantial correspondence to clauses. A range of structural, prosodic and discourse-semantic phenomena are reviewed, including pausing, discourse accent, phase, and spoken sentence. The analysis begins with those phenomena that are characteristic of both monologic and multi-party discourse, and proceeds with those features that are only found in interactional exchange. The Russian-oriented system of discourse transcription and analysis turns out to be generally applicable to the English evidence.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Basics
  • 3.More complex instances
  • 4.Challenges of multi-party discourse
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
  • Appendix
References (25)
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