The contributions to this volume focus on the interrelation between prosody and iconicity and shed new light on the topic by enlarging the number of parameters traditionally considered, and by confronting various theoretical backgrounds. The parameters taken into account include socio-linguistic criteria (age, sex, socio-economic category, region); different kinds of speech situation; affect (attitudes and emotions); gestures; morpho-syntactic constraints. The analysis is pursued in theoretical frameworks such as Information Structure theory, Grice's theory, Relevance theory, experiential blending, Gussenhoven's biological codes, prosodic modelling, automatic detection. The languages covered include English, French, Italian, Swedish, Egyptian Arabic, and Majorcan Catalan. The book will be of great interest to linguists working on prosody.

The contributions to this volume focus on the interrelation between prosody and iconicity and shed new light on the topic by enlarging the number of parameters traditionally considered, and by confronting various theoretical backgrounds. The parameters taken into account include socio-linguistic criteria (age, sex, socio-economic category, region); different kinds of speech situation; affect (attitudes and emotions); gestures; morpho-syntactic constraints. The analysis is pursued in theoretical frameworks such as Information Structure theory, Grice's theory, Relevance theory, experiential blending, Gussenhoven's biological codes, prosodic modelling, automatic detection. The languages covered include English, French, Italian, Swedish, Egyptian Arabic, and Majorcan Catalan. The book will be of great interest to linguists working on prosody.

This book presents a collection of pioneering papers reflecting current methods in prosody research with a focus on Romance languages. The rapid expansion of the field of prosody research in the last decades has given rise to a proliferation of methods that has left little room for the critical assessment of these methods. The aim of this volume is to bridge this gap by embracing original contributions, in which experts in the field assess, reflect, and discuss different methods of data gathering and analysis. The book might thus be of interest to scholars and established researchers as well as to students and young academics who wish to explore the topic of prosody, an expanding and promising area of study.

This book contains a collection of cutting-edge papers on methodological aspects of prosody research. Current approaches to the gathering, treatment, and interpretation of prosodic data are discussed by experts in the field, illustrated by their own empirical research. Contributions focus on the choice and measurement of prosodic parameters, the establishment of prosodic categories, annotation structures for spoken-language data, and experimental methods for production and perception studies (including the construction of materials, modes of presentation, online vs. offline tasks, judgement scales, data processing, and statistical evaluation). The volume will serve as a handbook linking data collection and interpretation, allowing researchers in linguistics and related fields to make more informed decisions concerning their empirical work in prosody.

There is a growing interest among discourse analysts in incorporating the crucial element of prosody into the analysis of spoken language. These studies have tended to focus on specific aspects of prosody rather than presenting an over-all framework within which future analysis might continue. This volume establishes such a framework, and will consider the role of prosody in a variety of discourse genres. Using naturally occuring data, the author demonstrates how the examination of prosody can enhance traditional analysis.

This text illustrates an approach to prosodic typology through descriptions of the intonation and the prosodic structure of 13 typologically different languages based on the same theoretical framework and the transcription system of prosody known as Tones and Break Indices (ToBI).

Prosody is the rhythm, stress and intonation of speech, which encodes information that is not encoded by the syntax or words of an utterance. Prosody is critical for parsing speech, constructing syntactic structure, and building a representation of the conversational discourse model, among other linguistic functions. In 2008, researchers from linguistics, psychology and computer science gathered at the inaugural meeting of the conference on Experimental and Theoretical Approaches to Prosody at Cornell University. The papers in this volume represent the cutting edge of the prosody work presented at that conference. The articles in this special issue tackle a number of key questions: What type of information about syntax, semantics, and context is reflected in prosody and intonation? How much of that information can a listener retrieve from the signal? How does this information facilitate language processing in online conversations? How can this information be used to parse corpora, and how can corpora be used to test theories on prosody?

Spoken interaction is impossible without prosody. Intonation, pitch register, tempo, rhythm, pausing, loudness and voice quality all contribute to the spontaneous negotiation process that is everyday talk. This highly accessible introduction to the prosody and analysis of everyday conversation explains basic concepts and methods of interpretation using a wealth of examples from real-life conversations. Readers are introduced to the many conversational practices prosody plays a part in through sample analyses, all of which are available to listen to as downloadable audio files on the accompanying companion website: www.palgrave.com/analysingconversation Packed with authentic examples, practical suggestions for analysis, suggestions for further reading and a helpful glossary, this clear and comprehensive guide is essential reading for students and researchers alike.

This is the first historical investigation on the nonverbal component of conversation. In the courtly society of 16th and 17th century England, it is argued that a drift appeared toward an increased use of prosodic means of expression at the expense of gestural means. Direct evidence is provided by courtesy books and personal documents of the time, indirect evidence by developments in the English lexicon. The rationale of the argument is cognitively grounded; given the integral role of gestures in thinking-for-speaking, it rests on an isomorphism between gestural and prosodic behavior that is established semiotically and elaborated by insights from neurocognitive frequency theory and task dynamics. The proposal is rounded off by an illustration from present-day conversational data and the proof of its adaptability to current theories of language change. The cross-disciplinary approach addresses all those interested in (historical) pragmatics, cognitive linguistics, cultural semantics, semiotics, or language change.

This study presents a unified, economic account of the intricate relationship between form, meaning and interpretation in the Norwegian nominal system – without reference to polysemy. It covers all kinds of nominal signs, i.e. nouns, adjectives, pronouns and determiners, as well as the conventionalised syntactic combinations between them. Among its central innovations is the introduction of the feature general number into Norwegian morphology.