Intonational PEriods (IPE) and Formulaic Language: A Genre-based Analysis of a French Speech Database

Abstract

Abstract. This paper addresses prosodic aspects of phraseology from the point of view of the 'lexicogrammar' approach in Rhapsodie, a richly annotated corpus of spoken French. Textometric methods enable the selection of statistically relevant phenomena both in terms of marked prosodic salience and recurrent lexicogrammatical features. Among the possible prosodic characteristics of phraseology, salient initial prominences of prosodic macro-units are considered in this paper. Within the Rhapsodie annotation framework, these macro-units correspond to the largest prosodic constituents, the Intonational PEriods (IPE). We have analysed the IPEs bearing the strongest level of initial prosodic salience. The prosodic properties of the units so delineated are discussed, as well as the discourse type of these phenomena. Some recurrent patterns of oratory and procedural speech genres are described using prosody and Part-of-Speech (POS) annotations. We suggest that the role of initial salience of specific prosodic patterns is to facilitate perception and interaction in human speech and to establish the structure of speakers' turns.