Discourse structure and information structure : interfaces and prosodic realization

In this paper we review the current state of research on the issue of discourse structure (DS) / information structure (IS) interface. This field has received a lot of attention from discourse semanticists and pragmatists, and has made substantial progress in recent years. In this paper we summarize the relevant studies. In addition, we look at the issue of DS/ISinteraction at a different level—that of phonetics. It is known that both information structure and discourse structure can be realized prosodically, but the issue of phonetic interaction between the prosodic devices they employ has hardly ever been discussed in this context. We think that a proper consideration of this aspect of DS/IS-interaction would enrich our understanding of the phenomenon, and hence we formulate some related research-programmatic positions

Discourse-Related Effects on Speech Durations: A Challenge for Models of Speech Production

With topic labeling providing an analysis of the text's organization, the experiment reported here investigated the relation between the structure of the text and the durational patterns produced when it was read aloud. Durations were chosen for study in part because much previous work has concentrated on F0. In addition, acoustic durations in English are known to be affected by segment identity and local context in a way that F0 is not, so it is interesting to see whether, like F0, durations are also affected by the overall organization of the discourse. The present paper focuses on the interactions between discourse organization and durations, and how these may reveal drawbacks in current models of speech production

The role of prosody in interpreting causality in English discourse

Previous studies have well established that certain causal connectives encode information about the semantic-pragmatic distinction between different types of causal relations such as CAUSE-CONSEQUENCE versus CLAIM-ARGUMENT relations. These “specialized” causal connectives assist listeners in discerning different types of causality. Additionally, research has demonstrated that utterances expressing CLAIM-ARGUMENT relations exhibit distinct prosodic characteristics compared to utterances expressing CAUSE-CONSEQUENCE relations. However, it remains unknown whether the prosodic characteristics of utterances expressing causality can aid listeners in determining the specific type of causality being conveyed. To address this knowledge gap, this study investigates the impact of the prosody, specifically the prosody of the causal connective so in English, on listeners’ interpretation of the type of causality expressed. We conducted a perception experiment employing a forced-choice discourse completion task, where the participants were required to select a continuation for each sound clip they heard. The sound clip consisted of factual events followed by the causal connective so. We found that the odds of listeners choosing subjective continuations over objective continuations increased when the connective so at the end of the sound clip was pronounced with subjective causality prosodic features, such as prolonged duration and a concave f0 contour. This finding suggests that the prosody of the connective so plays a role in conveying subjectivity in causality, guiding listeners in interpreting causal relations. In addition, it is important to note that our data revealed individual variation among listeners in their interpretations of prosodic information related to subjective-objective causality contrast

Speaking of causality: On the role of prosody in communicating subjective and objective causality in discourse

Language users distinguish between different types of causal relations, such as those that can be directly observed from the physical world (referred to as objective causality, e.g., “My daughter had a fight with her best friend, so she cried”), and those that are constructed by people in the mental world (referred to as subjective causality, e.g., “My daughter cried, so maybe she had a fight with her best friend”). Previous research has shown that coherence markers, such as specialized causal connectives (e.g., want ‘because’ and omdat ‘because’ in Dutch), can help people determine the type of causality the speaker intends to express. This dissertation focuses on the role of prosody—variation in pitch, loudness, or timing—in communicating these two different types of causality. The dissertation first investigates the use of prosody in expressing subjective and objective causality using a dialogue task. The results show that there is a trade-off between the use of prosody and the use of specialized causal connectives in expressing those two types of causality. This dissertation then examines the effect of prosodic information on the construction of subjective and objective causality. The results obtained from a discourse completion task indicate that the prosodic features of the English connective so affect listeners’ expectations of causal relations in upcoming discourse. These results provide new insights into how different types of causality are communicated in spoken discourse by showing that not only the lexical information (connectives), but also the prosodic information plays a crucial role

O efeito dos estimulos auditivo e visual na percepção dos marcadores prosodicos lexicais e graficos usados na escrita do portugues brasileiro

Orientador: Luiz Carlos CagliariTese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da LinguagemResumo: Para algumas teorias da percepção da fala, esse processo pode ocorrer pela ação da audição (Teoria Quântica), da visão (Teoria Motora) ou, ainda, pela ação conjugada da audição e da visão (efeito McGurck). Para que o processo de percepção seja completo, é requerida a decodificação da mensagem contida no percepto, que pode ocorrer a partir de um acesso top-down (descendente) ou bottom-up (ascendente) às informações dos diferentes níveis. Considerando que a percepção da fala conta com informações visuais, a presente tese busca investigar a ação dos estímulos auditivo e visual na percepção de recursos gráficos, ou marcadores prosódicos, usados na escrita do Português Brasileiro com a função de representar graficamente variações prosódicas. Dentre os diferentes tipos de marcadores descritos na literatura, foram objetos de investigação desta pesquisa aqueles que são palavras escritas e cuja carga semântica indica variações prosódicas, sendo, portanto, Marcadores Prosódicos Lexicais (MPL), e aqueles que são marcas gráficas, Marcadores Prosódicos Gráficos (MPG), em particular, os sinais de pontuação, cujo sentido convencionado tem o mesmo efeito da carga semântica dos MPLs. Os MPLs são recursos gráficos usados para indicar, na escrita, atitudes do falante, enquanto os MPGs tendem a indicar variações prosódicas mais diretamente relacionadas ao processo dialógico. Considerando que esses recursos gráficos possuem uma realidade visual e uma realidade auditiva, objetivou investigar a ação dos estímulos auditivo e visual na percepção desses marcadores. Para tanto, foi delineado um design experimental, no qual foram controladas as frases-alvo sob escopo dos marcadores: MPLs: gritar, dizere baixo, berrar, sussurar, dizer rápido e dizer devagar; MPGs: : ! ? . ¿ ,; bem como foram controlados os contextos em que essas frases apareceriam. Foram gravadas as leituras em voz alta dos textos com as frases-alvo. Para controle da ação dos estímulos auditivo e visual, foram consideradas 6 condições experimentais: 2 condições mono modais auditiva e visual; 4 bimodais: 1 com coincidência entre as informações auditivas e visuais; 1 com estímulo auditivo sem variação melódica e 2 em condição de mismatch, desencontro das informações dos estímulos auditivo e visual). Nas condições bimodais, os estímulos auditivo e visual foram apresentados simultaneamente de forma sincronizada. O teste de percepção foi aplicado com cada informante, a quem foi solicitado a informar em voz alta, através de um número específico, o marcador prosódico que tinha observado. Foi medido o tempo de reposta de execução dessas tarefas. A partir das repostas dadas pelos informantes, foram obtidas as variáveis porcentagem de escolha do marcador presente no estímulo auditivo e de escolha do marcador presente no estímulo visual e porcentagem de escolha do marcador diferente daqueles presentes nos dois estímulos. A variável velocidade de leitura foi obtida para cada informante.Os dados foram submetidos a testes estatísticos de normalidade, comparação de médias e reamostragem. Os resultados obtidos evidenciam participação diferenciada dos estímulos auditivo e visual na percepção dos MPLs e dos MPGs. Partindo desses dados, os processos de percepção e de reconhecimento dos marcadores prosódicos são discutidos à luz das teorias de percepção e reconhecimento da falaAbstract: The perception of speech can be understood as product of the hearing (Quantum Theory), of the vision (Motor Theory) or of the conjugated action of the hearing and the vision (McGurck effect). This process can be bottom-up or top-down. The access of the information can occur in the different levels: from phonological level to context level or from context level to phonological level. Considering that the speech perception process accounts with auditory and visual information, this thesis proposed to investigate the action of the auditory and visual input in the perception of graphic marks of the Brazilian Portuguese writing which have the function to represent graphically prosodic variations. We investigate two types of the markers: a) written words whose semantics load indicates prosodic variations ¿ Lexical Prosodic Markers (LPM) ¿ and b) graphic markers that indicate prosodic variations ¿ Graphical Prosodic Markers (GPM) ¿ in particular, the punctuation signals.The LPMs are graphic marks of the writing used to indicate attitudes of the speakers, while the GPMs indicate prosodic variations more related to the dialogic process. Considering that these graphic markers have a visual reality and an auditory reality, we investigated the action of the auditory and visual input in the perception of these markers. We delineated six experimental conditions (two mono modal conditions and four bi modal conditions). In the experimental conditions we controlled the contexts of the occurrence of the LPMs (to cry out, to say low, to bawl, to whisper, to speak quickly and speak slowly)and of the MPGs (: ! ? . ¿ ,). So, we obtained several texts that composed the corpus. We recorded the lecture aloud this texts done by an announcer and we presented this record associates with a writing form those texts to eleven people, in the individual sections for that they could to observe the prosodic markers. We also presented them some tasks and in these tasks, the subjects would answer aloud a correspondent number of the observed prosodic marker. We measure the time spent in the execution theses tasks. Moreover, we measure reading tax to each subject. So we obtained three variables: a) prosodic marker choice b) answer time; c) reading tax. We submitted the data to the following statistic tests: a) normality; b) comparison of averages and c) bootstrapping.In the thesis, the process of perception and recognition of the prosodic markers are argued to the light of the perception theories and recognition of speechDoutoradoDoutor em Linguístic