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<TITLE>Sum: prosodic marking OF function words</TITLE>
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Hello all,<BR>
<BR>
My thanks to all who replied. Below is an omnibus of responses which included references or related observations. Thanks also to those who e-mailed me just to express interest in the topic.<BR>
<BR>
Jeff<BR>
-- <BR>
Jeff Deby<BR>
PhD Candidate, Sociolinguistics<BR>
Georgetown University<BR>
debyj@georgetown.edu<BR>
<BR>
<HR ALIGN=CENTER SIZE="3" WIDTH="95%"><TT>Hello Jeff Deby,<BR>
<BR>
I did once write briefly about this phenomenon, though I can't<BR>
for the life of me remember where. I do remember, though,<BR>
what I thought was going on. I'm pretty sure, too, that<BR>
I reached my conclusion through discussions with Bob Ladd,<BR>
so you may want to look in his book Intonational Phonology<BR>
(CUP) to see if you can find his take on it.<BR>
<BR>
The pattern seems to arise with people who have to say the<BR>
same thing over and over again, or at least use the same<BR>
content words over and over again (football commentators,<BR>
for instance - the action changes but the lexical items are<BR>
constant). Normally accent falls on content words. But if<BR>
content words are repeated, the second occurrences will be<BR>
deaccented. I think that what is happening in these cases -<BR>
not accentuation of the function words, but unconscious and<BR>
automation deaccentuation of repeatedly used content words,<BR>
leading effectively to comparatively heavier accent on the<BR>
function words.<BR>
<BR>
Best wishes, and good luck with your work --<BR>
<BR>
Anne Cutler<BR>
<BR>
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<HR ALIGN=CENTER SIZE="3" WIDTH="95%"> </TT>Dear Jeff<BR>
<BR>
David Faber and myself wrote an article on this subject. The reference is:<BR>
A. Cruttenden and D. A. Faber, *'The accentuation of prepositions',<I> Journal of Pragmatics </I>(1991), 15, 265-86.<BR>
You'll also finfd some discussion in the second edition of my book 'Intonation' published by CUP in 1997.<BR>
<BR>
Alan cruttenden/<BR>
<HR ALIGN=CENTER SIZE="3" WIDTH="95%"><BR>
<TT>Jeff,<BR>
<BR>
I don't know of any references right now, but I find THE phenomenon to BE <BR>
frequent IN political speech in Spain. But, I don't think it consists of <BR>
accenting just function words. Rather, it's like a prosodic template <BR>
superposed to intonational phrases. Some accents fall on function words, <BR>
others on lexical words, even on lexically unstressed syllables.<BR>
<BR>
I've observed it is typical to emphasize the first syllable of intonational <BR>
groups. Since often these words are articles, prepositions, conjunctions, <BR>
etc., THE impression ensues / THAT only function words / ARE emphasized. A <BR>
constructed example:<BR>
<BR>
EL partido socialista<BR>
CON su política decidida<BR>
DE integración social<BR>
DE igualdad<BR>
Y de progreso<BR>
QUIEre destacar<BR>
QUE los trabajadores ...<BR>
<BR>
I don't know if the case is the same with English. Flight attendant <BR>
intonation is a special case, it must be the only universal register in the <BR>
world ;-) . I would also say that the phenomenon may be different in each <BR>
of those speech styles you mention (sportscasters, politicians, etc.).<BR>
<BR>
Best,<BR>
-celso<BR>
Celso Alvarez Cáccamo<BR>
<FONT COLOR="#0000FF"><U>lxalvarz@udc.es<BR>
<HR ALIGN=CENTER SIZE="3" WIDTH="95%"></U></FONT>Hi Jeff,<BR>
<BR>
The following article has been very<BR>
helpful/interesting to me. It's not directly on what<BR>
you're asking about, but close--about how/when<BR>
auxiliaries are stressed phrase-finally.<BR>
<BR>
Sharon Inkelas and Draga Zec. "Auxiliary Reduction<BR>
without empty categories" Working Papers of the<BR>
Cornell Phonetics Laboratory 1993, vol. 8, 205-253.<BR>
<BR>
I would be very interested in other articles that you<BR>
turn up and in the direction of your research. I am a<BR>
PhD candidate in English using prosodic phonology to<BR>
discuss metrics and prosody in poems. I'd be<BR>
interested to learn more of what you are doing. The<BR>
ability/choice to stress or not stress function words<BR>
has been very important to 20th c. American poetry, as<BR>
much as hockey!<BR>
<BR>
Best,<BR>
Natalie (Gerber-Lash)<BR>
<HR ALIGN=CENTER SIZE="3" WIDTH="95%">Hi Jeff,<BR>
<BR>
Your works sound interesting. Maybe not directly related but Korean<BR>
speakers seem to emphasize function words prosodically. In Seoul<BR>
Korean (so-called the standard accent of Korean) when an utterance is<BR>
produced, it is usually the case that prosodic subphrasing takes place in<BR>
a way that a pitch accent is located on the right edge of each phrase.<BR>
These prosodic subphrases are often called 'accentual phrase' and the<BR>
right-edge position is usually the postion where function words are<BR>
located. An examples is:<BR>
<BR>
na-nun Mary-rul sarang-hae.<BR>
I-Topical Mary-Accusitive love-Declarative_ending.<BR>
"I love Mary"<BR>
<BR>
The function words "nun" and "rul" are all pitch accented as they are<BR>
located at the right edge of each accentual phrase. More detailed<BR>
discussion you can refer to:<BR>
<BR>
Sun-Ah Jun. 1998. The Accentual Phrase in the Korean prosodic<BR>
hierarchy. Phonology. vol 15(2): 189-226.<BR>
<BR>
This case of emphasising may not be based on the semantics of the function<BR>
words, but I thought it can at least support the idea that prosodic<BR>
emphasising does not necessarily avoid the semantically less counted<BR>
positions.<BR>
<BR>
Cheers to your research.<BR>
Tae.<BR>
=================================<BR>
Tae-Yeoub Jang, PhD<BR>
<BR>
Research Fellow<BR>
Natural Language Processing Lab<BR>
Department of Computer Science<BR>
Sogang University<BR>
Sinsu-dong, Mapo-gu<BR>
Seoul 121-742, South Korea<BR>
Phone: +82 2 706 8954 (lab)<BR>
+82 16 9210 3637 (mobile)<BR>
<HR ALIGN=CENTER SIZE="3" WIDTH="95%">jeff,<BR>
there's been quite a lot of work on this, especially in sports commentator<BR>
speech - tennis, snooker, soccer, racing, etc. the work of catherine<BR>
johns-lewis springs to mind. as far as i know, though, there's been<BR>
relatively little on how or why this happens (except that it's a particular<BR>
style of speech). for reasons why it might happen, see my 1993 article in<BR>
Journal of pragmatics 19, "what determines accentuation?": briefly, the idea<BR>
is that function words become candidates for emphasis when all the content<BR>
words in the same domain are either semantically empty or predictable from<BR>
the context: this may well occur in the genres where this style is common!<BR>
regards,<BR>
alex.<BR>
<HR ALIGN=CENTER SIZE="3" WIDTH="95%">Dear Jeff<BR>
<BR>
I teach Speech Stream English to facilitate 2nd language acquisition by<BR>
Asian adults, so I'm not an expert in your field. But I have noticed the<BR>
same phenomenon when I am screening radio recordings I make. My guess is, it<BR>
is a device to capture and hold attention by breaking down the usual<BR>
(expected) prosodic patterns.<BR>
<BR>
Best wishes<BR>
<BR>
Sue Sullivan<BR>
University of Canterbury<BR>
Christchurch<BR>
New Zealand<BR>
<HR ALIGN=CENTER SIZE="3" WIDTH="95%">Dear Jeff,<BR>
<BR>
I noticed this phenomenon in my corpus of Egyptian Standard Arabic, especially<BR>
in news broadcasts, but only at the beginning of phrases. It seems to me that it<BR>
is a kind of strengthening of one end of a prosodic domain, but it might still<BR>
have some semantic/pragmatic reason as well.<BR>
Caroline Fery has noticed this in her Intonational phonology of German as well,<BR>
she thinks it to be related to news broadcasts only.<BR>
I am not sure if the instances you mentioned are all at the beginning of<BR>
phrases, it doesn't seem so, but you should consider this probability.<BR>
<BR>
Best regards,<BR>
Dina<BR>
<HR ALIGN=CENTER SIZE="3" WIDTH="95%"><BR>
</TT><BR>
<BR>
<TT>Ah, I'm glad someone is finally looking at this! I've been wondering<BR>
about it for years. Please do post a summary, I'd love to know what's out<BR>
there. (Sorry I don't know of anything myself) Speaking of "do", that<BR>
seems to be part of this phenomenon: a redundant auxiliary "do" is added<BR>
(and also stressed) where it wouldn't ordinarily be needed, as in "We DO<BR>
suggest that you take all your personal belongings..."<BR>
<BR>
Ellen C-M<BR>
<HR ALIGN=CENTER SIZE="3" WIDTH="95%">this thing that you mention (i'm neither linguist nor prosidist if that's <BR>
even a word), but this thing seems to be everywhere. it even gets translated <BR>
into body language by newscasters. watch the eyebrows of CNN heads.<BR>
<BR>
Maz881@aol.com<BR>
<HR ALIGN=CENTER SIZE="3" WIDTH="95%"><BR>
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