Integrating phonetics and phonology in the study of linguistic prominence

Cangemi, Francesco; Baumann, Stefan

doi:10.1016/j.wocn.2020.100993

Cited by 21 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…Since the evidence for clear categorical limitations between prosodic patterns is scarce, the question arises whether this idea is satisfactory as a guiding element in prosody research. This has led researchers to call for an integration of categorical and gradual aspects in intonation research (e.g., Cangemi & Baumann, 2020;Grice et al, 2017). The data provided in the present paper underline the importance of gradient prosodic modulations for our understanding.…”

Section: Categorical Distinctions Of Prominence Relationsmentioning

confidence: 50%

The inverse relation of pre-nuclear and nuclear prominences in German

Roessig¹

2023

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The importance of pre-nuclear prominences for focus marking has been largely neglected. Recent studies however present first evidence that the prosody of the pre-nuclear region indicates its status as part of a broad focus or as pre-focal. This study presents a systematic investigation of the pre-nuclear domain and its relation to the nuclear accent in German. The results show that the realization of the pre-nuclear domain indeed depends on whether it is focal or pre-focal: The pre-nuclear noun is characterized by larger F0 excursions, higher F0 maxima and larger durations when it is in broad focus than when it precedes a narrow focus. Furthermore, the realization of a pre-focal, pre-nuclear domain depends on the following focus: The pre-nuclear noun is produced with smaller F0 excursions, lower F0 maxima and shorter durations before a corrective focus than before a non-corrective narrow focus. The comparison to the nuclear accent suggests an inverse relationship, i.e., the pre-nuclear domain becomes less prominent when the nuclear domain becomes more prominent. The findings suggest that the phonetic manifestation of information structure is distributed over larger prosodic domains and entails the modulation of phrasal prominence profiles rather than just local adjustments of the nucleus.

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Section: Categorical Distinctions Of Prominence Relationsmentioning

confidence: 50%

The inverse relation of pre-nuclear and nuclear prominences in German

Roessig¹

2023

Preprint

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“…This special issue is concerned with the prosodic marking of prominence in a range of typologically diverse languages. Starting from an understanding of prominence as being a linguistic element that stands out from neighboring elements (Streefkerk, 2002; Himmelmann & Primus, 2015; von Heusinger & Schumacher, 2019; Cangemi & Baumann, 2020) the papers of this issue investigate properties of prosodic prominence with a cross-linguistic focus, corroborating this general view of prominence as a relational property. At the same time, we acknowledge that prominence entails the property of being an “organizational principle” for linguistic structure (von Heusinger & Schumacher, 2019: 18, referring to the domain of discourse pragmatics) or, in other words, that a prominent element organizes its environment, providing a structure for the context in which it appears (Cangemi & Baumann, 2020, p. 2).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 82%

“…Moreover, for elements in structurally prominent positions, it is not strictly necessary that these elements are accompanied by prominence-enhancing prosodic cues. This means that prosodic cues that signal prominence, and, by their presence, signal the surrounding prosodic structure in a bottom-up way, can be superfluous because linguistic structure itself predicts inherent prominence of that particular position (Cangemi & Baumann, 2020). Perception and processing of prominence involves both bottom–up-based processes, in which information from the incoming signal is used, and top-down processes, in which prior knowledge builds expectations as to where and to what degree prominence will occur (Cole et al, 2010; Bishop et al, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prosodic Prominence – A Cross-Linguistic Perspective

Grice

Kügler

2021

Lang Speech

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This paper is concerned with the contributions of signal-driven and expectation-driven mechanisms to a general understanding of the phenomenon of prosodic prominence from a cross-linguistic perspective. It serves as an introduction to the concept of prosodic prominence and discusses the eight papers in the Special Issue, which cover a genetically diverse range of languages. These include Djambarrpuyŋu (an Australian Pama-Nyungan language), Samoan (an Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian language), the Indo-European languages English (Germanic), French (Romance), and Russian (Slavic), Korean (Koreanic), Medumba (Bantu), and two Sino-Tibetan languages, Mandarin and Taiwanese Southern Min.

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“…The highlighting function of prosody consists in making one element prominent compared to its neighbours, namely to make it 'stand out' from its context by virtue of its acoustic characteristics (Terken, 1991, Cangemi & Baumann, 2020. For some languages, one way to attain prosodic highlighting is accentuation, reflected in a bundle of acoustic cues corresponding to F0 modulation (change in its dynamic movement), local increase in duration, overall enhanced energy and changes in spectral properties (Hermes & Rump, 1994;Campbell, 1995;Sluijter & van Heuven, 1996;D'Imperio, 2000;Heldner, 2003;Kochanski et al, 2005;Baumann & Winter, 2018;Kügler & Cahloun, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prosodic marking of information status in Italian. Sbranna et al 2023

Sbranna¹,

Ventura²,

Albert³

et al. 2023

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Previous studies on the prosodic marking of information status argue that Italian tends to resist deaccentuation of given elements. In particular, Italian reportedly always accents post-focal given information within noun phrases (NPs), so that it is not possible to reliably reconstruct the information status of the items from the acoustic signal. However, descriptions have so far been concerned with categorical accent patterns, lacking crucial information about continuous phonetic parameters and their distribution in the utterance in ways that can contribute to prosodic marking. In this paper, we use a novel approach based on periodic-energy-related measures to explore how speakers of the Neapolitan variety of Italian modulate continuous prosodic parameters to differentiate information structure. We show that, contrary to previous findings, Italian speakers of the Neapolitan variety do mark information status prosodically within noun phrases. The discrepancy with previous work is explained by the fact that the prosodic marking of post-focal givenness is not achieved through the categorical presence or absence of a pitch accent on one specific syllable, but through the gradual modulation of phonetic parameters at various locations. Moreover, we find that these modulations occur early in the noun phrase. We also show that native speakers can make use of their knowledge of these modulations to reliably identify post-focal given elements in the absence of the pragmatic context, that is, directly from the acoustic signal.

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Integrating phonetics and phonology in the study of linguistic prominence

Cited by 21 publications

References 5 publications

The inverse relation of pre-nuclear and nuclear prominences in German

The inverse relation of pre-nuclear and nuclear prominences in German

Prosodic Prominence – A Cross-Linguistic Perspective

Prosodic marking of information status in Italian. Sbranna et al 2023

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