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What tools are needed to account for prosody in its relation with discourse ?. A. Di Cristo, C. Portes, C. Auran, R. Bertrand Laboratoire Parole et Langage Aix en Provence. 8th International Pragmatic Conference, Toronto, 13-18 july 2003. Introduction.
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What tools are needed to account for prosody in its relation with discourse ? A. Di Cristo, C. Portes, C. Auran, R. Bertrand Laboratoire Parole et Langage Aix en Provence 8th International Pragmatic Conference, Toronto, 13-18 july 2003
Introduction • A session devoted to « Prosody and text units » ! • Our talk: • A preliminary issue • What kind of prosodic information is needed to deal with Discourse analysis? • Our object: • A complex interface network of heterogeneous forms and functions 8th International Pragmatic Conference
Some precisions • Form • in a general meaning, any verbal, prosodic and/or gestural configuration used in order to convey meaning • Function • these pragmatic meanings • Prosodic information • a real question and a complicated problem: • What kind of prosodic cues? • How to represent them? • Working on French 8th International Pragmatic Conference
Hypotheses about discourse • Discourse • A contextualization activity • The product of this activity • Discourse interpretation based on integrated representations: • Interpretation of the combination of propositional structures (Roulet et al., 2001) • Interpretation of ‘embodied experiences’ (Gibbs, 2003) 8th International Pragmatic Conference
What about prosody? • Prosody contributes to the construction of these integrated representations through: • Its multilevel parsing function • Its relational and inferential functions • Its identification function • Types of prosodic markers • Local, global, iterative • Categorical, scalar, gradual • Perceptually relevant (‘interpreter strategy’, Reboul & Moeschler, 1998) 8th International Pragmatic Conference
What tool(s) ? A multilinear grid • Two patterns of interaction for discourse cues (verbal, prosodic and mimo-gestural cues): • Convergence • Dispersion • A multilinear grid for analysis • Direct interpretation of vertical alignment or syntagmatic combination of cues • Emergence of original interactions (heuristic aspect) • Emergence of relevant cues masked by their superposition 8th International Pragmatic Conference
What tool(s) ? A multilinear grid 8th International Pragmatic Conference
INTSINT tier and « list effect » • Repetition of intonational cadences (LUT) frequent in enumerations 8th International Pragmatic Conference
Downtrend tier and syntactic cohesion • downtrend on successive accented syllables (A) • Syntactic cohesion of the first four accentual groups • Broken by the final commentary group (rising-falling contour) • Role of pauses 8th International Pragmatic Conference
Pitch Range and parenthesis • Raised level and span expansion = emphatic parenthesis 8th International Pragmatic Conference
Pitch Range and polyphony • Normal ReSp/ReLe = speaker proper voice • Raised/expanded episod = reported speech • Normal/compressed segment = speaker self quotation 8th International Pragmatic Conference
Rythmical tiers and syntactic iteration • Repetition of rythmical pattern [2 1 3] • Repetition of syntactic structure • Metrical iteration=syllable lengthening+pauses+pitch variations, etc. 8th International Pragmatic Conference
« arc accentuel » (accentual arc) and textual grouping • « arc accentuel » = secondary and primary accent framing a text segment • Associated with the compression of the register span • Iconic of « entre guillemets » 8th International Pragmatic Conference
Conclusion • Those different samples show the diversity of prosodic means to materialize pragmatic meanings • They have allowed us to show how we conceive prosodic cues and represent them in order for the description to better fit discourse variability • This versatility is allowed by the collaboration of different prosodic cues associated with cues from other levels of language analysis • This approach is work in progress, the aim of which is to identify sets of forms and functions ,and their relations, relevant to discourse analysis 8th International Pragmatic Conference
Thank you for your attention This presentation is available online at the following address : http://www.lpl.univ-aix.fr/~prodige/ 8th International Pragmatic Conference
The textual part of the multilinear grid 8th International Pragmatic Conference