Intonation Units Revisited
Cesuras in talk-in-interaction
1st Edition
Published on 15. September 2016
336 pages
978-90-272-6690-3 (ISBN)
Description
Intonation units have been notoriously difficult to identify in natural talk. Problems include fuzzy boundaries, lack of exhaustivity, and the potential circularity involved when studying their interface with other language-organizational dimensions. This volume advocates a way to resolve such problems: the 'cesura' approach. Cesuras, or breaks in the flow of talk, are created by discontinuities in the prosodic-phonetic parameters of speech that cluster to various extents at certain points in time. Using conversation-analytic and interactional-linguistic methodology, the volume identifies the parameters creating cesuras in talk-in-interaction and proposes ways to notate them depending on the researcher's goal. It also offers a way to study the role of cesuras at the prosody-syntax interface non-circularly, which leads to new insights concerning language variation and change. The volume will thus be of major import to anyone working with natural spoken language, its chunks, its various dimensions, and its variation and change.
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09/2016
John Benjamins Publishing Co
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Content
- Intro
- Intonation Units Revisited
- Editorial page
- Title page
- LCC data
- Table of contents
- List of Tables
- List of Figures
- List of Abbreviations
- Acknowledgements
- 1. Introduction
- 1.1 Prosodic-phonetic chunking in talk-in-interaction
- 1.2 Linguistic modeling of prosodic-phonetic chunking: Units
- 1.3 A practical problem: Fuzzy IU boundaries
- 1.4 Solutions to fuzzy-boundary issues so far
- 1.5 The cesura approach
- 2. Previous approaches to prosodic-phonetic structuring
- 2.1 The unit approach
- 2.1.1 Monologue-oriented approaches
- 2.1.1.1 The British School and related approaches
- 2.1.1.2 Bolinger's configurational approach
- 2.1.1.3 The American structuralist approach
- 2.1.1.4 Acoustic approaches
- 2.1.1.5 Summary: Monologue-oriented approaches and units
- 2.1.2 Interaction-oriented approaches
- 2.1.2.1 Conversation Analysis
- 2.1.2.2 Interactional Sociolinguistics
- 2.1.2.3 Discourse-Functional Linguistics
- 2.1.2.4 Interactional Linguistics
- 2.1.2.5 The York Phonology/Phonetics for Conversation approach
- 2.1.2.6 Summary: Interaction-oriented approaches and units
- 2.1.3 Summary
- 2.2 The boundary approach
- 2.2.1 First attempts
- 2.2.2 An interactional approach
- 3. The cesura approach
- 3.1 The concept of cesuras
- 3.1.1 From projection and Gestalt endings to cesuras
- 3.1.2 The greater granularity of cesuras
- 3.1.3 Refining the degree of prosodic-phonetic cesuring
- 3.2 Notating cesuras
- 3.2.1 Notation systems available
- 3.2.2 A notation system for cesuras
- 3.2.2.1 Minimal transcription of prosodic-phonetic cesuras
- 3.2.2.2 Basic transcription of prosodic-phonetic cesuras
- 3.2.2.3 Fine transcription of prosodic-phonetic cesuras
- 3.2.2.4 Notation of prosodic-phonetic cesural areas
- 3.2.2.5 Notating prosodic-phonetic cesuras and cesural areas in a parametric grid
- 3.3 Summary: The cesura approach
- 4. Studying cesuring in talk
- 4.1 General methodological considerations
- 4.2 Data
- 4.3 Methods employed in this book
- 4.4 Summary
- 5. The prosodic-phonetic parameters of cesuring
- 5.1 A starting point: Participant incomings
- 5.2 Prosodic-phonetic parameters at incomings
- 5.2.1 Previous findings
- 5.2.2 Initial observations
- 5.2.2.1 The data: Smooth incomings
- 5.2.2.2 Prosodic-phonetic cesuring parameters with smooth incomings
- 5.2.3 Extending the collection
- 5.2.3.1 Data and method
- 5.2.3.2 Results
- 5.2.4 Beyond smooth incomings
- 5.2.4.1 Rhythmically non-integrated incomings
- 5.2.4.1.1 Delayed and late incomings
- 5.2.4.1.2 Early incomings
- 5.2.4.2 Regular employment of the parameter set and deviant cases
- 5.2.5 Prosodic-phonetic structuring and syntactic completion
- 5.2.6 Conclusions: Parameter changes at incomings
- 5.3 From parameters at incomings to cesuring parameters
- 5.4 Variability in the cesuring clusters - a key for research
- 5.5 Conclusions: Cesuring parameters in talk-in-interaction
- 6. Cesuras in response organization and the syntax-prosody interface
- 6.1 Cesuras and the organization of responding to multi-unit turns
- 6.1.1 Responding to multi-unit turns
- 6.1.2 Previous research
- 6.1.3 The "turn-likeness" of incomings
- 6.1.4 Determining cesural strength
- 6.1.5 Evidence for the hypothesis
- 6.1.6 Conclusions and caveats
- 6.2 Cesuras and semantic-syntactic unit boundaries
- 6.2.1 Problems of previous approaches
- 6.2.2 Cesuras - a key to the syntax/semantics-prosody interface
- 6.2.3 The correlation of prosodic-phonetic cesuras and semantic-syntactic structure: Some observations
- 6.3 Summary
- 7. Cesuras at work in language variation and change
- 7.1 And
- 7.2 The emergence of final And in AE
- 7.2.1 Previous studies on And and final particles
- 7.2.2 Data and Methods
- 7.2.3 Positional and functional variation with And in AE
- 7.2.4 The emergence of a final particle
- 7.2.4.1 Interactional contingencies which stop the flow of talk
- 7.2.4.2 Specific position of the cesura introduced
- 7.2.4.3 Cesuring strength constellation
- 7.2.4.4 The sedimentation of dangling And
- 7.2.5 Summary
- 7.3 The emergence of hendiadic constructions
- 7.3.1 Previous findings
- 7.3.2 VP conjunction and the emergence of hendiadys in the cesura approach
- 7.3.2.1 Investigating VP conjunction with the cesura approach
- 7.3.2.2 Explaining the emergence of hendiadic constructions with the cesura approach
- 7.3.2.3 Further implications
- 7.4 Summary and outlook
- 8. Conclusions
- 8.1 Main assumptions and results presented in this book
- 8.2 Advantages of the cesura approach
- 8.3 Some wider implications
- 8.4 Issues for further research
- References
- Appendix
- Appendix 1: Transcription conventions
- GAT2 Minimal Transcript
- GAT2 Basic Transcript
- GAT2 Fine Transcript
- Appendix 2: Corpora used in this book
- Appendix 3: Calls selected from the CallHome corpus
- Appendix 4: Excerpts of the selected CallHome calls used for the quantitative study of prosodic-phonetic parameter changes at smooth and actual incomings
- Index of subjects and selected authors
