Structuring information through gesture and intonation

Face-to-face communication is multimodal. In unscripted spoken discourse we can observe the interaction of several “semiotic layers”, modalities of information such as syntax, discourse structure, gesture, and intonation. We explore the role of gesture and intonation in structuring and aligning information in spoken discourse through a study of the co-occurrence of pitch accents and gestural apices. Metaphorical spatialization through gesture also plays a role in conveying the contextual relationships between the speaker, the government and other external forces in a naturally-occurring political speech setting

Tonal placement in Tashlhiyt: How an intonation system accommodates to adverse phonological environments

In most languages, words contain vowels, elements of high intensity with rich harmonic structure, enabling the  perceptual retrieval of pitch. By contrast, in Tashlhiyt, a Berber language, words can be composed entirely of voiceless segments. When an utterance consists of such words, the phonetic opportunity for the execution of intonational pitch movements is exceptionally limited. This book explores in a series of production and perception experiments how these typologically rare phonotactic patterns interact with intonational aspects of linguistic structure. It turns out that Tashlhiyt allows for a tremendously flexible placement of tonal events. Observed intonational structures can be conceived of as different solutions to a functional dilemma: The requirement to realise meaningful pitch movements in certain positions and the extent to which segments lend themselves to a clear manifestation of these pitch movements

The Role Of Lexical Contrast In The Perception Of Intonational Prominence In Japanese

In this dissertation, I examine the effects of lexical accent on the perception of intonational prominence in Japanese. I look at how an F0 accent peak is perceived relative to another flanking F0 peak in the same utterance with respect to perceived intonational prominence. Through four experiments, I show that the lexical prosodic structure plays a significant role in the perception of intonational prominence. I first show that two distinct perceptual processes are at play in the perception of relative perceived prominence in Japanese: accentual boost normalization and downstep normalization . Accentual boost normalization normalizes the accentual boost of an accented word. In this process, the extra F0 boost assigned by a lexical accent does not count as part of the F0 peak\u27s excursion that contributes to the perceived prominence of the F0 peak. I demonstrate that when an accented word and an unaccented word are perceived as having the same prominence, the accented word has a higher F0 peak value than the unaccented word does. Downstep normalization compensates for the production effect of downstep, a pitch range compression phenomenon after a lexical accent. Experiments show that for an F0 peak to be perceived as having equivalent prominence to a preceding F0 peak, the second peak is always lower in F0 when the first word is accented than when it is unaccented. This suggests the existence of a perceptual process that normalizes the effect of downstep. I then examine the nature of accentual boost normalization and downstep normalization and show that they refer to two distinct types of lexical accent property when they are applied. One is the phonetic F0 contour shape that is characteristic of accented words. The other is the phonological lexical accent information that is uniquely specified for accented words. The experimental results show that the perceptual effects of the normalization processes are seen when only the phonological lexical accent information of a word is present with its F0 contour shape being ambiguous as well as when the same word is acoustically manipulated into different F0 contour shapes

A grammar of Choguita Rarámuri: In collaboration with Luz Elena León Ramírez, Sebastián Fuentes Holguín, Bertha Fuentes Loya and other Choguita Rarámuri language experts

This book provides the first comprehensive grammatical description of Choguita Rarámuri, a Uto-Aztecan language spoken in the Sierra Tarahumara, a mountainous range in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua belonging to the Sierra Madre Occidental. A documentary corpus developed between 2003 and 2018 with Choguita Rarámuri language experts informs the analysis and is the source of the examples presented in this grammar. The documentary corpus, which consists of over 200 hours of recordings of elicited data, narratives, conversations, interviews, and other speech genres, is available in two archival collections housed at the  Endangered Languages Archive  and at UC Berkeley’s Survey of California and Other Indian Languages. Choguita Rarámuri is a highly synthetic, agglutinating language with a complex morphological system. It displays many of the recurrent structural features documented across Uto-Aztecan, including a predominance of suffixation, head-marking, and patterns of noun-incorporation and compounding (Sapir 1921; Whorf 1935; Haugen 2008b). Other features of typological and theoretical interest include a complex word prosodic system, a wide range of morphologically conditioned phonological processes, and patterns of variable affix order and multiple exponence. Choguita Rarámuri is also of great comparative/historical importance: while several analytical works of Uto-Aztecan languages of Northern Mexico have been produced in the last years (Guerrero Valenzuela 2006, García Salido 2014, Reyes Taboada 2014, Morales Moreno 2016, Villalpando Quiñonez 2019,  inter alia), many varieties still lack comprehensive linguistic description and documentation.   Contributor biographies Choguita elder †Luz Elena León Ramírez was a master storyteller and an invaluable source of linguistic, cultural and historical knowledge. She contributed many narratives to the corpus, including procedural texts, historical narratives, descriptions of culturally relevant events in the community, and personal history from her childhood. She also collaborated in elicitation sessions and translating and annotating her own and other language experts' texts.   Bertha Fuentes Loya has authored narratives, and has contributed to the corpus as a consultant for elicitation sessions and has collaborated in the annotation of texts recorded with other language experts. She has shared her expertise about variation between Choguita Rarámuri and neighboring Rarámuri varieties. She is also an expert seamstress and authored several narratives and procedural texts about her art   Sebastián Fuentes Holguín is a passionate advocate for the language and one of the main leaders of the community-based initiative to document the cultural, historical and linguistic heritage of Choguita. He has authored several monologic narratives and ceremonial speeches and has participated as consultant and teacher in elicitation sessions.

A grammar of Choguita Rarámuri: In collaboration with Luz Elena León Ramírez, Sebastián Fuentes Holguín, Bertha Fuentes Loya and other Choguita Rarámuri language experts

This book provides the first comprehensive grammatical description of Choguita Rarámuri, a Uto-Aztecan language spoken in the Sierra Tarahumara, a mountainous range in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua belonging to the Sierra Madre Occidental. A documentary corpus developed between 2003 and 2018 with Choguita Rarámuri language experts informs the analysis and is the source of the examples presented in this grammar. The documentary corpus, which consists of over 200 hours of recordings of elicited data, narratives, conversations, interviews, and other speech genres, is available in two archival collections housed at the  Endangered Languages Archive  and at UC Berkeley’s Survey of California and Other Indian Languages. Choguita Rarámuri is a highly synthetic, agglutinating language with a complex morphological system. It displays many of the recurrent structural features documented across Uto-Aztecan, including a predominance of suffixation, head-marking, and patterns of noun-incorporation and compounding (Sapir 1921; Whorf 1935; Haugen 2008b). Other features of typological and theoretical interest include a complex word prosodic system, a wide range of morphologically conditioned phonological processes, and patterns of variable affix order and multiple exponence. Choguita Rarámuri is also of great comparative/historical importance: while several analytical works of Uto-Aztecan languages of Northern Mexico have been produced in the last years (Guerrero Valenzuela 2006, García Salido 2014, Reyes Taboada 2014, Morales Moreno 2016, Villalpando Quiñonez 2019,  inter alia), many varieties still lack comprehensive linguistic description and documentation.   Contributor biographies Choguita elder †Luz Elena León Ramírez was a master storyteller and an invaluable source of linguistic, cultural and historical knowledge. She contributed many narratives to the corpus, including procedural texts, historical narratives, descriptions of culturally relevant events in the community, and personal history from her childhood. She also collaborated in elicitation sessions and translating and annotating her own and other language experts' texts.   Bertha Fuentes Loya has authored narratives, and has contributed to the corpus as a consultant for elicitation sessions and has collaborated in the annotation of texts recorded with other language experts. She has shared her expertise about variation between Choguita Rarámuri and neighboring Rarámuri varieties. She is also an expert seamstress and authored several narratives and procedural texts about her art   Sebastián Fuentes Holguín is a passionate advocate for the language and one of the main leaders of the community-based initiative to document the cultural, historical and linguistic heritage of Choguita. He has authored several monologic narratives and ceremonial speeches and has participated as consultant and teacher in elicitation sessions.