Prosodic marking of appositive relative clause types in spoken discourse: pragmatic and phonetic analyses of a British English corpus

Cyril Auran & Rudy Loock

Laboratoire Savoirs, Textes, Langage Université Lille 3 - CNRS UMR 8163

Global project and methodology

Aim: relate discourse functions/structure and prosody Study of Appositive Relative Clauses in English (ARCs, see 1)

(1) The students, who like linguistics, also like translation.

2-step methodology: Discourse annotation: discourse function, information status of ARC and

MC, syntactic characteristics Prosodic annotation: semi-automatic analysis of the corresponding

recordings using original scripts with Praat (cf. Boersma & Weenink 2006)

Corpora: Aix-MARSEC (cf. Auran, Bouzon & Hirst 2004) IViE (cf. Grabe & Post 2002) ICE-GB (cf. Greenbaum 1996)

ARCs and their functions in discourse

Starting point:

Loock’s (2003, 2005, 2007) taxonomy of ARCs and their discourse functions:

ARCs and their functions in discourse

ARCs and their functions in discourse

Examples :

(2) he was convinced # the battle # for the hearts # and minds of the people # was being won # especially # among the Ovambo # who form the majority # of SWAPO's support

(3) the first book he took from the library was Darwin's # Origin of Species # which inspired him with the dream of becoming a geologist

(4) Israelis # have sympathy and liking for Americans # which is just as well # since the country is swarming # with transatlantic visitors

ARCs and their functions in discourse

Differences in the hierarchisation of the informational contents (ARC vs. MC): Relevance/subjectivity: MC = foreground vs. ARC = background Continuative: informational contents on the same level (narrative

dynamism traditionally restricted to independent clauses; cf. Depraetere 1996)

=> Are continuatives independent clauses?(cf. Ross 1967, Emonds 1979, McCawley 1982, Fabb 1990 among

others, who express this idea for ARCs as a whole.)

=> Prosodic investigation: are ARCs realized with the intonation contour of independent clauses or parentheticals?

Prosodic analysis

Prosody as a macro-system: tonal aspects (tone and intonation, in

relation with speech melody) temporal aspects (unit durations and

speech rate) intensity (one of the major correlates of

loudness) voice quality (in relation with spectral

characteristics of the speech signal)

Prosodic analysis

Representation levels (Hirst et al. 2000): acoustic level: physical characteristics of the

speech signal (F0, raw durations, dB) phonetic level: retains only linguistically

significant elements (low-level physical constraints factored out: MoMel modelling, z-transformed durations)

phonological levels (surface and deep): discrete and abstract coding

Prosodic analysis

Prosodic analysis

2 prosodic dimensions:

Data extraction and analysis

Number of items per ARC type: Relevance 37 Subjectivity 8 Continuative 1 Relevance/Subjectivity 4 Ambiguous continuative 2 Unidentified 2

Data extraction and analysis

Discourse parameters (5): ARC type Position (initial/medial/final) Information status of antecedent Information status of ARC Phrastic status of antecedent

Data extraction and analysis

Prosodic parameters (48):

Tonal domain (32): ARC mean F0 (Htz + semitones or ST), ARC minimum F0 (Htz + ST), ARC maximum F0 (Htz + ST), ARC register span (Htz + ST), ARC onset (Htz + ST), ARC offset (Htz + ST), previous IU mean F0 (Htz + ST), previous IU minimum F0 (Htz + ST), previous IU maximum F0 (Htz + ST), previous IU register span (Htz + ST), previous IU offset (Htz + ST), next IU mean F0 (Htz + ST), next IU minimum F0 (Htz + ST), next IU maximum F0 (Htz + ST), next IU register span (Htz + ST), next IU onset (Htz + ST), difference between previous IU offset and ARC onset (ST), difference between ARC offset and next IU onset (ST)

Temporal domain (10): ARC duration (raw and normalised), previous IU duration (raw and normalised), next IU duration (raw and normalised), difference between previous IU normalised duration and ARC normalised duration, difference between ARC normalised duration and next IU normalised duration, silence duration before ARC, silence duration after ARC

Intensity domain (6): mean of ARC global intensity, standard deviation of ARC global intensity, mean of previous IU global intensity, standard deviation of previous IU global intensity, mean of next IU global intensity, standard deviation of next IU global intensity

Results All ARC types:

Results Relevance vs.

Subjectivity:

Results

Results

Discussion

All ARCS both typical and atypical characteristics: Register and intensity levels: lower than those

of surrounding units typical of prosodic parentheticals

Register and intensity spans + speech rate classical IUs realizing independent clauses

to be linked with the possibility for ARCs to: have the syntactic behaviour and the semantic

interpretation of independent clauses convey independent speech acts (cf. Emonds 1979,

McCawley 1982 among others)

Discussion

Relevance vs. Subjectivity ARCs: Discourse discontinuity marking through high onset values for

both types Subjectivity ARCs display even stronger discontinuity ↔

more important rupture with the discourse topic (cf. shift between the referential and interpretative levels; see frame 1) More peripheral information conveyed by subjectivity ARCs (non-

topical comment or judgement) Lower intensity level values for Subjectivity ARC: strategy

used by the speaker to induce the perception of intermediate levels between otherwise discrete categories such as continuity/discontinuity, subjectivity/objectivity, etc. (conflicting prosodic characteristics for subjective episodes; cf. Di Cristo et al. 2004)

Speech rate differences need further investigation (the great majority of subjectivity ARCs qualifies sentential antecedents (cf. Loock 2007): parameters difficult to separate)

Conclusion

Apparent correlation between discourse functions and prosody

Some prosodic characteristics atypical of appositions in general

Differences among ARC types: Subjectivity ARCs display prosodic rupture cues, on a par with the peripheral information which they convey

Further investigation: The respective roles of the syntactic status of the antecedent

(nominal vs. sentential) and of the ARC type, particularly with relation to speech rate, need to be closely analysed.

Prosodic characteristics of Continuative ARCs: typical of subordinate or main clauses?

Problem: availability of acoustically exploitable unscripted/spontaneous data