Skip to main content

What prosodic features does one have to take into account in order to analyze speech in conversations? What is the difference between a normal...

The term prosody refers to the elements of speech that can be heard and are other than words or phonemes. We define prosody as the "musical attributes of speech" that can be heard as "melody ..., rhythm, dynamics, tempo, and pausing" ("Part Two: Notes on Prosody," King's College London). Such musical elements are used to express emotions, just as laughter and pauses express emotions; therefore prosody is essential in interpreting discourse; it can even be said that conversations do not truly exist without prosody. As laid out by King's College London's "Notes on Prosody," there are 7 different prosody features used in interpreting discourse:
1. Intonation, which refers to the variation in pitches, meaning the changes in notes, in syllables as words are spoken.
2. Variations in loudness, which are created by raising or lowering voices.
3. Variations in stress, which refers to the changes in emphasis of syllables in words, phrases, or sentences.
4. Variations in vowel length such as we see in the difference between short vowels and long vowels.
5. Tempo, defined as the speed at which sounds are made, and pausing, which are stops between sounds.
6. Variations in pitch register, which refers to the changes in the overall pitch of a voice throughout a discourse as opposed to the pitch of individual tones.
7. Rhythm, which is a cyclical pattern that occurs over a span of time; in linguistics, such patterns are created through changes in stress and intonation.

Throughout discourse, we continually, intuitively use prosody to interpret meaning in an utterance, which is a unit of speech. We use prosody to analyze utterances by grouping words and phrases, picking out main phrases, following the flow of an argument, choosing possible meanings, and interpreting or communicating attitude. One example of prosody analysis can be seen in the fact that the same phrase of words can be stated as a question, a simple statement, or as a command, and meaning changes with each. Specifically, the phrase "finish the report" can be asked as a question, made into a simple statement of fact concerning tasks to be done, or even stated as a command to a subordinate, and meaning changes significantly in each case.

Rather than differentiating between the normal utterance and the emotional utterance, the field of linguistics differentiates between the linguistic prosody and the emotional prosody. Linguists define emotional prosody as "the ability to express emotions" (Raithel, V., & Hielscher-Fastabend, M., "Emotional and Linguistic Perception of Prosody," Folia Phoniatrica et Logopaedica). In contrast, linguistic prosody is the ability to eliminate ambiguity, the ability to recognize intentional organization of words or other parts within a sentence, the ability to recognize intonation contours within a sentence, meaning changes in tone, pitch, and stress. Both emotional and linguistic prosody rely on the same features of tempo, pitch, and loudness for interpretation.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A man has a garden measuring 84 meters by 56 meters. He divides it into the minimum number of square plots. What is the length of the square plots?

We wish to divide this man's garden into the minimum number of square plots possible. A square has all four sides with the same length.Our garden is a rectangle, so the answer is clearly not 1 square plot. If we choose the wrong length for our squares, we may end up with missing holes or we may not be able to fit our squares inside the garden. So we have 84 meters in one direction and 56 meters in the other direction. When we start dividing the garden in square plots, we are "filling" those lengths in their respective directions. At each direction, there must be an integer number of squares (otherwise, we get holes or we leave the garden), so that all the square plots fill up the garden nicely. Thus, our job here is to find the greatest common divisor of 84 and 56. For this, we prime factor both of them: `56 = 2*2*2*7` `84 = 2*2*3*7` We can see that the prime factors and multiplicities in common are `2*2*7 = 28` . This is the desired length of the square plots. If you wi...
Post a Comment
Read more

What warning does Chuchundra issue to Rikki?

Chuchundra, the sniveling, fearful muskrat who creeps around walls because he is too terrified to go into the center of a room, meets Rikki in the middle of the night. He insults Rikki by begging him not to kill him. He then insults him by suggesting that Nag might mistake Chuchundra for Rikki. He says, "Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes."  He issues this warning to Rikki not to help keep Rikki safe but as a way of explaining why Rikki's presence gives him, Chuchundra, more reason to fear.  Chuchundra starts to tell Rikki what Chua the rat told him--but breaks it off when he realizes he might be overheard by Nag. He says, "Nag is everywhere, Rikki-Tikki." Rikki threatens to bite Chuchundra to get him to talk. Even then, Chuchundra won't overtly reveal any information. But he does say, "Can't you hear, Rikki-Tikki?" This is enough of a clue for the clever mongoose. He listens carefully and can just make out the "faintest scratch-s...
Post a Comment
Read more