18.2726, Diss: Text/Corpus Linguistics: Heinz: 'Text Type Prosody. A corpus...'

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LINGUIST List: Vol-18-2726. Wed Sep 19 2007. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 18.2726, Diss: Text/Corpus Linguistics: Heinz: 'Text Type Prosody. A corpus...'

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1)
Date: 19-Sep-2007
From: Matthias Heinz < matthias.heinz at uni-tuebingen.de >
Subject: Text Type Prosody. A corpus-assisted study on prosodic patterns specific to text types in Italian, with special reference to French

 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2007 12:44:18
From: Matthias Heinz [matthias.heinz at uni-tuebingen.de]
Subject: Text Type Prosody. A corpus-assisted study on prosodic patterns specific to text types in Italian, with special reference to French
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Institution: Chemnitz University of Technology 
Program: Department of English 
Dissertation Status: Completed 
Degree Date: 2003 

Author: Matthias Heinz

Dissertation Title: Text Type Prosody. A corpus-assisted study on prosodic
patterns specific to text types in Italian, with special
reference to French 

Linguistic Field(s): Text/Corpus Linguistics

Subject Language(s): French (fra)
                     Italian (ita)

Language Family(ies): Romance


Dissertation Director(s):
Stephan Habscheid
Rainer Schlösser
Harro Stammerjohann

Dissertation Abstract:

Which factors can be regarded as essential for the prosodic differentiation
of oral text varieties? The study investigates this question on the basis
of a corpus of recordings of the text genres fairy-tale in Italian (fiaba)
and radio news reports in Italian and French (giornale radio, radiojournal). 

Starting from the assumption that every spoken utterance is characterized
by prosodic features, at minimum rhythmic and melodic patterns, it can be
shown that the specific combination of those features favors recognition of
certain utterance or text types - even when the recognition of lexical
content is impaired on the part of the hearer. Those cases are clearly
described by Fónagy (1978): "[I]t is possible to identify the type of genre
of communication that is being transmitted, even in situations where
neither semantic information nor contextual cues are available. If the
radio has been turned on in a neighbouring room, we can not only identify
correctly the source of the communication, but we can recognize whether the
news is being broadcast [or] a fairy tale is being told [...]". 

Although the effect of this prosodic marking of text types seems
intuitively clear and perceptually relevant as a Gestalt, singling out
individual prosodic parameters turns out to be rather complex. The elements
identified as essential for prosodic text type patterns are the temporal
parameters pausing, fluency, and tempo as well as intonational factors
(with tempo and overall intonational structuring resulting in especially
characteristic patterns). After an overview of previous research, those
factors are given a detailed empirical analysis based on the corpus. Their
relevance for the recognition of text types is then tested by means of a
perception experiment. The results are discussed in the more general
theoretic context of language and text perception.  

Findings include (a) evidence for a clear prosodic differentiation of text
types both within Italian and, as contrastive analysis shows,
crosslinguistically (Italian and French); (b) indications for the cognitive
relevance of a prosodic text type competence (embedded in a more general
textual competence) favoring fast hearer recognition of text types even in
cases where the input is deficient. 





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