Based on a video recording of conversational British English, this paper tests whether several different subordinate syntactic structures are evenly vocally integrated to their environment. "Secondary constructions" have been described in linguistics as dependent, subordinate forms elaborating on primary elements of discourse. Although their verbal and vocal characteristics have been deeply analysed, few studies have provided a qualified picture of their vocal integration. Beyond showing that secondary constructions are not evenly dependent on their environment, the results suggest that prosody demarcates secondary constructions more than it integrates them. The creation of a break preferentially takes place retrospectively, immediately after the subordinate structure through rhythmic features and/or pitch upsteps.
International audienceBased on a video recording of conversational British English, this paper aims at describing the relation between verbal and non-verbal signals in the production process of parentheticals within the framework of Multimodal Discourse Analysis. Parentheticals are described in linguistics as side sequences interrupting linear development. Although their syntactic, prosodic and discursive characteristics have been deeply analysed, few studies have focused on the articulation of the different communicative modes in their production process. Beyond showing that gesture brings complementary information in regard to prosody, contributing to a composite collateral message, the results allow better delineation and understanding of skip-connecting phenomena as constructing coherence. Changes in the modal configuration throughout the parenthetical sequence suggest modes are dynamic and flexible resources for indexing parentheticals and their particular framing function
Based on a video recording of conversational British English, this paper tests within the framework of Multimodal Discourse Analysis whether two different subordinate structures are integrated to the same degree in their environment. Subordinate constructions have been described in linguistics as dependent forms elaborating on primary elements of discourse. Although their verbal characteristics have been analysed in depth, few studies have focused on the articulation of the different communicative modalities in their production or provided a qualified picture of their integration. The main hypothesis is based on the capacity of subordinate constructions to show distinct forms of autonomy depending on their syntactic type, thus expressing different degrees of break. Beyond showing that subordinate constructions are not dependent to the same degree depending on how speakers use the prosodic and kinetic modalities to express greater (in)dependency, the results suggest that the creation of a break mainly relies on prosodic cues. Changes in the modal configuration throughout the sequence suggest modalities are dynamic and flexible resources for integrating or demarcating subordinate constructions in function of their syntactic type.
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