Where Prosody Meets Pragmatics: Research at the Interface

Abstract

Pragmatics is the study of utterance meaning, and it is well known that prosody-or, more informally, ' tone of voice'-can contribute crucially to that meaning. Pragmatic effects in speech are thus the product of both what is said and how it is said, and the two are inextricably linked. However, while many working in pragmatics are well aware of the important contribution of prosody, exactly how these effects are generated is harder to establish. A number of the ways in which prosody plays a pragmatic role are set out in t?is volume. It aims to give a cross-section of the many different topics and approaches within the field of prosody and its interface with pragmatics. Levinson (1983), in his textbook on pragmatics, acknowledged that the absence of prosody from his account, particularly intonation, was a serious omission, but justified the omission on two grounds: first that there was as yet no agreement on how to analyse intonation, and second that the area was understudied. Twenty-five years on, the American autosegmental model, captured in the ToBI transcription system, has become the international standard in intonational phonology (e.g. Ladd, 1996; Gussenhoven, 2004), and for typological comparison (Jun, 2005), but other models still continue to have currency, including variations of the British system ofholistic contours (fall, rise, fall-rise etc.). None, however, accounts sufficiently for all pragmatic effects of prosodywhich also derive from the kind of effects often referred to as paralinguistic. Levinson's second caveat, that the area was understudied, is easier to counter. Interest in the contribution of prosody to pragmatic meaning has grown markedly in the intervening decades, albeit in a fragmented way, and from a wide variety of theoretical perspectives. The scope of these developments depends on one's view of pragmatics. The Anglo-American approach

From pitch to purpose: The prosodic–pragmatic mapping of [I + verb] belief constructions in English and Mandarin

“…This finding offers a novel contribution toward better understanding the pragmatic--prosodic interface: Whilst previous research on [I + verb] has focused on theories regarding how prosodic prominence may pragmatically affect the meaning behind [I + verb] variations (e.g. Dehé and Wichmann, 2010;Wichmann et al, 2009), research has not previously investigated the cognitive basis of these notions in an empirical manner. This study thereby provides novel evidence that such claims regarding assertiveness of various [I + verb] conditions created through focus-marking, and the speaker attitude they invoke regarding confidence, strengthen the notion of a widespread phenomenon of prosodic focus-marking as a cue for pragmatic prominence.…”

“…Research shows that prosodically, contrastive focus (i.e. ''contextually contrastive'', Wichmann et al, 2009:10) appears to be realized universally as a pragmatic tool for presenting new information. Indeed, there is congruent evidence that use of pitch (F0) to signify contrastive focus (hereafter referred to as ''focus'') is used by both American English speakers (e.g.…”

Intonational meaning in institutional settings: the role of syntagmatic relations

“…Much has been written about meaning and intonation, in a variety of frameworks (e.g., Wichmann et al 2009): it can have a discoursal 'meaning', indicating textual coherence, topic structure and information structure, an interactional meaning (i.e., in the maintaining and constructing of conversation) and, most importantly, so-called 'attitudinal' meaning. The features of intonation that are thought to contribute to meaning in English are broadly speaking segmentation (how and where the speech is divided into phrases), accent placement (which syllables are made prominent) and contour choice (the pitch movement starting on the last accented syllable up to the end of a phrase or utterance).…”

Ujuum paayalchi’ ‘El sonido de los rezos’: nuevas perspectivas para el estudio de los discursos rituales mayas, sus cualidades vocálicas y sus variaciones.

“…Estas han constituido un ámbito creciente de investigación lingüística desde hace unas pocas décadas, con trabajos como los de Sacks (1987) sobre el tiempo entre turnos de palabras, y sobre todo los de Couper-Kuhlen (1993) y de Auer et al (1999). Dichos autores resaltaron la poca atención que se le había dado a la temporalidad enunciativa, un fenómeno tan esencial en la producción del significado, la formación de actos de palabras y en la interacción comunicativa, iniciando investigaciones sobre dichos aspectos (ver referencias en Couper-Kuhlen 2009; Barth-Weingarten et al 2010;Wichmann et al 2009). Ciertos estudios han contrastado en particular las diferencias rítmicas notables que se dan entre el habla leída o dictada y el habla espontánea, cuanto más en contexto dialógico, y han propuesto que dependen de procesos cognitivos distintos (Guaïtella 1999).…”