Prosody and language comprehension

Abstract

This review provides a summary of the most recent advances on the study of how prosody is used during language comprehension. Prosody is characterized as an abstract structure composed of discrete tonal elements aligned with the segmental composition of the sentence organized in constituents of increasing size, and this structure is influenced by the phonological, syntactic, and informational structures of the sentence. Here, we discuss evidence that listeners are affected by prosody when establishing those linguistic structures. Prosody has been shown to influence the segmentation of the utterance into syllables and words, and, in some cases, whether a syllable or word is judged to be present or not. The literature on how prosody informs the structural relationship between words and phrases is also discussed, contrasting views that assume a direct (albeit probabilistic) link between syntax and prosody with those that posit a complex interface between syntax and prosodic structure. Finally, the role of prosody in conveying important aspects pertaining to the sentence's information structure (i.e., which parts of the sentence's meaning are highlighted and brought forward to the discourse, which ones are presupposed and left in the background, which attitudes are being conveyed about the concepts or propositional content) has long been recognized. Current research focuses on which prosodic elements contribute to marking the dimensions (or semantic primitives) of the information structure.

Changes in brain activity following intensive voice treatment in children with cerebral palsy

“…The absence of this connection during normal phonation condition was not surprising given the reduced auditory processing load required compared to the other conditions. However, correlations existed between left STG and left and right MTG for both speech and prosody conditions, suggesting the need for coordination among auditory and semantic processing regions when children are presented with and produce words with prosodic characteristics, which is important for conveying the meaning of the sentences [Dahan, 2015]. Our observations are consistent with studies showing that during semantic processing of speech, simultaneous activation of STG and MTG are related to language tasks requiring semantic processing [Price, 2012].…”

Evidential Strength of Intonational Cues and Rational Adaptation to (Un‐)Reliable Intonation

“…The intended meaning of an utterance depends not only on what we say, that is, which words we use and how we combine them, but also on how we say them. For instance, we use intonation, that is, the modulation of fundamental frequency across the utterance ( f 0 ), to encode sentence structure, illocutionary acts, and postlexical discourse relationships (e.g., Cruttenden, ; Cutler, Dahan, & Van Donselaar, ; Dahan, ; Gussenhoven, ; Ladd, , among many others). Yet, despite its important role in human communication, we only have limited knowledge about how listeners’ process intonation in order to recognize what a speaker intends to say.…”

Intonational processing is incremental and holistic

“…In many languages, including English, speakers modulate fundamental frequency (corresponding to what we perceive as pitch) to signal non-propositional meaning related to the speaker's pragmatic intentions (i.e., speech acts), their social stance or their emotional state (e.g. Bolinger 1989, Bänziger & Scherer 2005, Cruttenden 1986, Cutler 1997, Gussenhoven 2004, Ladd 2008, Dahan 2015, Holiday 2016. We henceforth refer to utterance-wide pitch modulation expressing nonpropositional meaning as 'intonation'.…”