36.1359, Confs: Prosody at the crossroads of disciplinary pathways (France)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-36-1359. Fri Apr 25 2025. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 36.1359, Confs: Prosody at the crossroads of disciplinary pathways (France)

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Date: 22-Apr-2025
From: Stephan WILHELM [stephan.wilhelm at univ-grenoble-alpes.fr]
Subject: Prosody at the crossroads of disciplinary pathways


Prosody at the crossroads of disciplinary pathways
Short Title: ugaprosody2026
Theme: Prosody-Voice quality

Date: 21-May-2026 - 22-May-2026
Location: Grenoble, France
Contact: Stephan Wilhelm
Contact Email: stephan.wilhelm at univ-grenoble-alpes.fr
Meeting URL: https://ugaprosody2026.sciencesconf.org/

Linguistic Field(s): Clinical Linguistics; Forensic Linguistics;
Language Acquisition; Phonetics; Sociolinguistics
Subject Language(s): English (eng)
                     French (fra)
                     Spanish (spa)
Language Family(ies): European Unclassified; Indo-European

Submission Deadline: 16-Feb-2026

Université Grenoble Alpes, France (Saint-Martin-d’Hères campus, IMAG
building)
Keynote speakers
Eugenia San Segundo, Materials Science Institute of Madrid – CSIC
Felix Schaeffler, Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh
Radek Skarnitzl, Charles University, Prague
Jane Stuart-Smith, University of Glasgow
Over the past decades, the enthusiasm generated by prosodic studies
has spread well outside the boundaries of the traditional subfields of
linguistics (phonetics, phonology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics)
and reached the related disciplines of psycholinguistics,
neurolinguistics, clinical and forensic practice as well as language
processing (cf. Di Cristo, 2004).
Whereas prosody has traditionally been used as an umbrella term
covering the interconnected phenomena of stress, rhythm and intonation
(whose phonetic expressions mainly involve changes in fundamental
frequency, intensity and duration and their perceptual correlates
[Lehiste, 1970; Arvaniti, 2020]), we also aim to include voice quality
in the program alongside the established categories of stress and
intonation, to encourage discussion on the nature of prosodic
features.
Intonation is a supralexical phenomenon consisting in variations in
fundamental frequency and their perceptual correlates observed at
sentence or constituent level (Ladd, 1996; Cruttenden, 1997). It can
fulfil all three essential functions of speech: linguistic,
paralinguistic and extralinguistic (Abercrombie, 1967).
The rhythm of languages or varieties of languages relates to the
hierarchical organisation of variably salient speech units in the
temporal development of the production of the speech chain (Dellwo,
2003). The nature of these units varies depending on languages or
language varieties.
Along with Laver (1968, 1980, 1994), Sharpe (1970) and Mackenzie-Beck
(2005), we consider that voice quality – which also conveys
linguistic, paralinguistic and extralinguistic information – does not
only result from speakers’ biologically-derived differences in vocal
apparatus, but also from articulatory (or supralaryngeal) as well as
phonatory (or laryngeal) settings.
Articulatory setting consists in the overall positioning of the
articulatory organs. Wilson (2006) defines it as the “underlying or
default posture of the articulators (i.e., the tongue, jaw, and
lips)”, whereas Honikman (1964) considers that it consists in “the
gross oral posture and mechanics [requisite as a framework for the
integrating of the isolated sounds into that whole] which constitutes
the pronunciation of a language”. This also applies to every idiolect.
Phonatory settings consist in the way the vocal folds are made to
vibrate. Stuart-Smith (2004) describes them as “glottal
configurations” or “stricture types”; that is, the potential
combination of specific types of tensions that can be brought to bear
on the vocal folds. Laver (1994) established a typology of the various
phonatory settings that can be achieved through these means.
Prosody is traditionally defined as a set of elements whose function
is superimposed upon that of the intrinsic features of segments
(Lehiste, 1970). However, the growing literature establishing that
children’s acquisition of prosodic structure far predates that of
discrete units like phonemes and words (cf. e.g., Davis et al., 2000;
Polzehl et al., 2024) suggests that it is preferable to conceive of it
as an underlying matrix into which the segments are embedded.
The main aim of this conference is to promote and enhance
collaborations between researchers from different subdomains in order
to review and discuss the applications of prosodic research to such
fields as language acquisition, foreign language teaching, forensic
and clinical phonetics, voice recognition, speech synthesis and
sociolinguistics.
Despite the existence of a growing literature on the subject, voice
quality remains by far the most under-investigated of the elements
listed above, especially as it has not conventionally been recognised
as a component of prosody. Hence our desire to lay particular emphasis
on its structural makeup and description as well as on existing
assessment protocols (cf. e.g., San Segundo and Mompean, 2017, San
Segundo, 2021).
Participants are invited to submit proposals for both oral and poster
presentations on the following issues and other related topics:
•    In what way can the study of voice quality influence our
conception of prosodic models?
•    How can voice quality be measured and described?
•    How do auditory impressions and instrumental measurements compare
in assessing voice quality?
•    How do auditory and instrumental evaluations compare in measuring
intonation? Or rhythm?
•    How do the components of prosody respectively or conjointly
contribute to informing accent studies and surveying language
variation and change?
•    What are the evidential values of voice quality, intonation and
rhythm acoustics in forensic voice analysis?
•    How can voice quality, intonation and rhythm be integrated into
models of speech synthesis?
•    In what manner can prosodic research be useful to speech
therapists in clinical situations?
•    To what extent could the study of voice quality, intonation and
rhythm help us gain a better understanding of the prosody-syntax and
prosody-discourse interfaces?
•    Could an in-depth analysis of these three prosodic components
benefit the study of prosody in spoken interaction?
•    Should the precedence of prosody over lexicon and syntax in child
language acquisition inform the debate over the directionality of the
prosody-syntax interface?
•    More generally, to what extent can language acquisition research
shape our understanding of the role and status of prosody?
•    How far could foreign language teaching benefit from a
prosody-based approach? And how can this be implemented practically?
Even though the talks will be given in English, they may bear on any
language(s).
Submissions must include a title and a one-page anonymous abstract
(excluding references), and be submitted through SciencesConf at:
https://ugaprosody2026.sciencesconf.org/submission/submit, by February
16, 2026.
Oral Presentations will consist of 30-minute presentations followed by
10-minute question and discussion sessions. Posters should be prepared
in Portrait format with a maximum size of A0.
Instructions for submission can be found here:
https://doc.sciencesconf.org/en/deposer/soumettre.html.
Call for Papers:
We are pleased to announce the Call for Papers for our upcoming
conference, “Prosody at the crossroads of disciplinary pathways.”
This interdisciplinary conference aims to bring together researchers
from various fields to examine and discuss the methodologies and
applications that shape current prosody research. We welcome
submissions that address the study of prosody from diverse
methodological perspectives and with various research aims.
The conference will be held on 21-22 May, 2026 in Grenoble
(Saint-Martin-d’Hères, IMAG building).
For more information on the conference theme, submission guidelines,
and important dates, please visit the conference website:
https://ugaprosody2026.sciencesconf.org
The deadline for abstract submission is 16 February 2026.
Important dates:
Conference: 21-22 May, 2026, 21-22 May, 2026 in Grenoble
(Saint-Martin-d’Hères, IMAG building)
Website and CFP Launch Date: 22 April 2025
Deadline for submission: 16 February 2026
Notification of acceptance: 31 March 2026
Programme: May 2026
REFERENCES:
ABERCROMBIE, D. (1967). Elements of General Phonetics. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press.
ARVANITI, A. (2020). “The Phonetics of Prosody.” In Oxford Research
Encyclopedia of Linguistics (online). Retrieved 14 Jan. 2025, from
https://oxfordre.com/lin-guistics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.001.0001/acrefore-9780199384655-e-411.
CRUTTENDEN, A. (1997 [1986]). Intonation (2nd ed.). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
DAVIS, B. L., MACNEILAGE, P. F., MATYEAR, C. L., & POWELL, J. K.
(2000). “Prosodic correlates of stress in babbling: An acoustical
study”. Child Development, 71, 1258–1270.
DELLWO, V. (2003). “Rhythm & Speech Rate: A variation coefficient for
delta C”. Proceedings of the 38th linguistic Colloquium, Budapest.
DI CRISTO, A. (2004). “La prosodie au carrefour de la phonétique, de
la phonologie et de l’articulation formes-fonctions”. Travaux
interdisciplinaires du Laboratoire parole et langage
d'Aix-en-Provence, vol. 23, pp. 67-211.
HONIKMAN, B. (1964). “Articulatory Settings”. In D. ABERCROMBIE, D. B.
FRY, P. A. D. MACCARTHY, N. C. SCOTT & J. L. M. TRIM (eds.), In Honour
of Daniel Jones: Papers Contributed on the Occasion of His Eightieth
Birthday 12 September 1961, 73-84.LAVER, J. (1968). “Voice quality and
indexical information”, British Journal of Disorders of Communication
3, 43-54.
LAVER, J. (1980). The Phonetic description of voice quality.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.LAVER, J. (1994). Principles of
phonetics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
LEHISTE, I. (1970) Suprasegmentals. Cambridge, Massachussets: MIT
Press.MACKENZIE-BECK, J. M. (2005). “Perceptual analysis of voice
quality: the place of Vocal Profile Analysis”. In W. J. HARDCASTLE and
J. M. MACKENZIE-BECK (eds.), A Figure of Speech: a Festchrift for John
Laver. London: Laurence Erlbaum, 285-322.
POLZEHL, T., HERZIG, T., WICKE, F., WERMKE, K., KHAMSEHASHARI, R.,
DAHLEM, M., MÖLLER, S. (2024). “Towards Classifying Mother Tongue from
Infant Cries – Findings Substantiating Prenatal Learning Theory”.
Proc. Interspeech 2024, 4199-4203.
SAN SEGUNDO & MOMPEAN (2017). “A simplified vocal profile analysis
protocol for the assessment of voice quality and speaker similarity.”
Journal of Voice, vol. 31, no. 5, pp. 644-e11-644-e27.
SAN SEGUNDO, E. (2021). “International survey on voice quality:
Forensic practitioners versus voice therapists”. Estudios de Fonética
Experimental, Vol. XXX, pp. 9-34.
SHARPE, M. C. (1970). “Voice quality: A suggested framework for
description and some observations”. In S. A. WURM and D. C. LAYCOCK
(eds.), Pacific Linguistic Studies in Honour of Arthur Capell. Pacific
Linguistics Series C, 13, 115-132.
STUART-SMITH, J. (2004). Phonetics and philology – Sound Change in
Italic. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
WILSON, I. L. (2006). “Articulatory settings of French and English
monolingual and bilingual speakers”. Unpublished PhD Thesis.
University of British Columbia.



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