Prosodic Analysis Research Articles

Major Poetic Variations (ʿilal) A Digital Phonetic Study

This research includes an introduction, three sections and a conclusion. The introduction highlights the significance of the study: highlighting the quantitative and the qualitative dimensions of prosodic analysis, the problem of the study: the terms describing prosodic variations without considering what they share in common, the objectives of the study: reducing the number of ʿilal by grouping the ones that belong to the same phonemic law, the methodology: the digital syllabification technique that addresses both the quantitative and the qualitative dimensions of phonemic syllables, and a review of relevant literature. The first section addresses the quantitative as well as the qualitative dimensions of the phonemic syllables that make up the rhythmic nuclei in verse foot as represented in the poetic major variation of addition. It also distinguishes between the ʿilal of addition that are limited to the quantitative change and those in which there are both quantitative and qualitative changes. The second section classifies the types of quantitative and qualitative change combinations in ʿilal of addition into four categories. The third section is concerned with studying compound ʿilal- such as the occurrence of two major variations at the same time, or the occurrence of a major variation and a minor variation (ziḥāfāt)- in terms of quantity and quality, and seeks to reach a general criterion that governs the harmony and cacophony of these ʿilal.

Stage Monologue and its Linguistic Features (Textual and Prosodic Analysis)

Spoken language production is considered to be one of the most difficult aspects of teaching a foreign language. It usually involves mastering pronunciation of sounds and intonation. If nowadays many teachers do not worry about the phonetic details of sounds, there is still focus on intonation as it has a great impact on the comprehensibility of the learner’s English. This is a very important issue for future teachers because correctness of pronunciation is one of the goals of any spoken language programme, with students asked to produce quite extended spoken monologues and to follow the requirements of various intonational styles. The aim of this study is to analyse textual and prosodic characteristics of stage monologue – a text produced on a theatre stage or in a film. Analytical methods were applied in order to obtain information about textual features and prosodic stylistic markers such as pitch level, range, tone modifications, loudness, and tempo, and also to develop style-forming factors in stage monologue. Results show that the stage monologues analysed possess all necessary characteristics of a text: informational content, delimitation, continuum, coherence, cohesion and completeness. Further analysis of stage monologue showed that it can be characterised by such specific features as expressiveness, normativeness, effectiveness, and conversational character. Stage monologues also possess all necessary prosodic markers. Certain style-forming factors of stage monologue were also developed in this study, including delimitation, accentuation of key words, thematic centres and expressively prominent centres, type of composition scheme, and theme. These results will be of significant pedagogical value to students who intend to become English teachers, and to teachers involved in linguistics research.

Using Oralstats for prosodic characterisation of speakers in different discourse genres

This paper presents the prosodic and morphosyntactic analysis of 437 intonational phrases, 2777 words and 12520 phones registered from the speech of four Spanish politicians in four different discourse genres (TV gathering, press conference, political rally and interview). Based on methods from forensic linguistics, sociolinguistics, phonetics and computational linguistics, a set of R scripts called Oralstats has been developed, which allows to carry out a multivariate, dynamic and interactive analysis of acoustic and textual data aligned with PRAAT. By doing so, a new computational approach is suggested for finding individual forensic marks, combining both phonetic and linguistic factors, such as lexical or morphosyntactic values. Data exploration comes from the visualization of prosodic and morphosyntactic variables collected through decision trees, heatmaps and boxplots. The results show how speakers behave in a significantly similar way when it comes to differentiating themselves by genre; however, in confrontational genres some unexpected phonic marks were found, such as low intensity or low pitch, (the expected behavior being the opposite), thus enabling us to single out some of the speakers.

Additive particles, prosodic structure and focus sensitivity in Hungarian

AbstractThe main aim of this article is to investigate the prosody-information structure interface in the analysis of the Hungarian additive particleis‘also, too’. We present a prosodic study of narratives, collected through guided elicitation, and provide a prosodic basis for a focus-based analysis ofis. Standard formal semantic approaches to the interpretation of additive particles regard additive particles asfocus sensitive, hence the associate of the particle is focal and the focus interpretation (in terms of alternatives) is a significant part in its semantics. This view is considered crosslinguistically valid, although the discussion mostly concerns English. In Hungarian, the focus sensitivity of the additive particle is not directly transparent and needs more elaboration. In the relevant literature, the issue of focus marking with respect to the additive particleishas been insufficiently studied or merely stipulated. In this article, we argue for the importance of a more elaborate study of the prosody-information structure interface in the analysis of Hungarian additive particles. Accordingly, we provide data and its analysis to support our core argument and claims. Our study contributes to the overall understanding and analysis ofisand to the general claims about focus marking and focus types in Hungarian. We aim to complement the standard semantic analyses by providing a prosodic analysis supporting the focus-sensitive analysis ofisinstead of merely stipulating an association with focus. On a more general level, we show that the various readings of additive particles can be explained by taking the prosodic patterns of the relevant constructions into account.

Parenthetical Units and Structures in Italian and German spoken language: Prosodic and textual analysis


 This work presents the prosodic analysis of Parenthetical Units in spoken Italian and German within the theoretical framework of the Language into Act Theory (L-AcT), which defines such textual units as Parentheses (PARs), i.e. devices used by the speaker to add information to the utterance on a secondary level of the text. Data were extracted from the Italian Minicorpus of the DB-IPIC resource and from the German FOLK corpus. Linguistic content and distribution of Parentheses were analyzed. Furthermore, a subset of approximately 100 PARs was selected for each corpus and these were prosodically analyzed in relation to the mandatory textual units called Comment within the L-AcT framework, which express the illocutionary force of the utterance. The results show similar characteristics for the two languages, such as an overall decrease of f0 values of the PARs and the correlation between the length of the PARs, as well as the presence of additional units separating it from the COM, and frequency values. The authors also noted the presence of Parenthetical Structures that go beyond the level of the simple textual unit, which could suggest that Parentheses are a wider textual strategy operating as inter-utterance.

Http://habibiaislamicus.com/index.php/hirj/article/view/197

Kaab Bin Zuhair is one of the those important literary personalities who played a vital role in the field of Arabic poetry in pre-Islamic & Islamic era. This article deals with the status of the famous poem "Lamiya" and its topical and artistic study. This Qaseeda (Poem) consists of fifty-seven verses. This poem artistically presents the high moral stature. It is also known by Qaseeda Baanat Suaad. The research is divided into six parts: 1. Introduction to the poet and Qaseeda and its authenticity. 2. Literary Importance of Laamiya 3. Opinions of ancient & modern experts about the title of the poem 4. Topical study of the Qaseeda 5. Literary and prosodic analysis 6.Results In short, this Qaseeda of high artistic significance has got more than fifty interpretations and translations and is regarded as a basic source of seerat study.

日本語・中国語態度音声の音響分析及び声質分析:――日本語母語話者及び中国語を母語とする日本語学習者を対象に――

日本語・中国語態度音声の音響分析及び声質分析:――日本語母語話者及び中国語を母語とする日本語学習者を対象に――

The Role of Prosodic Features in Showing Interactional Negotiation among Participants in Selected American Political Interviews

In this study the relationship between prosodic features and interactional relations, turn taking, and sequence organization has been investigated. In any speech situation there are particular prosodic cues used by the speakers in communication to have their turns. These cues are just like signals to tell others that the speaker is having his/her turn in speech. The researcher has investigated the expected signals determined by the speakers and recognized by the listeners to have turns. It is significant to show that some prosodic patterns reveal the turn completion or continuation. It is hypothesized that prosodic orientation like intonation, pitch register, and stress patterns display information about participants whether they have matching and non-matching of a previous turn. The repeated use of the same pitch height shows that the participants have an agreement about a particular situation. Two selected interviews are analysed using the strategy of opening and closing conversation, as well as discussion part and question-answer pairs. The prosodic analysis is carried out by using a computer program called Praat for doing acoustic analysis following E. Couper-Kuhlen’s model. It is concluded that prosodic orientation presents a remarkable background domain to reveal information about participants’ interaction. It is not only used in collaboration with other conversational accomplishments, but it represents an interactional domain in its own realm.

Prosodic Analysis of Advertising Videos (based on the material of German advertising in 1960-2015)

Prosodic Analysis of Advertising Videos (based on the material of German advertising in 1960-2015)

The realization of prosodic categories in political media discourse in British and American linguacultures

The main aim of the article is to describe, analyze and compare main prosodic categories that are realized in a unique context, namely in political media discourse. The article looks into the principles of classification of the prosodic categories as well as at realizational differences of three main prosodic categories: syllable, foot and intonation phrase. These categories are distinguished unanimously by the majority of the researchers and are described in the article form their structural and cognitive perspectives. The realizational differences of these categories derive from pragmatic and linguacultural features of English media communication. In the article media communication is represented with political media discourse which is understood as a new contextual model of media communication and is characterized by high degree of immediacy and interactivity. Certain attention in the article is given to the results of the comparative research of the realizational differences of the prosodic categories done by the author. On the basis of the data resulted from the prosodic and content analysis the author concludes that the realizational differences of the prosodic categories are often due to pragmatics of the discourse and the type of discourse itself.

Vowel-consonant metathesis in Nivaĉle

AbstractVowel-consonant metathesis is observed in a variety of contexts throughout the Nivaĉle (Mataguayan) grammar. It occurs in both verbal and nominal domains, characteristically resulting from the affixation of a consonant-initial suffix to a consonant-final stem. This paper provides an optimality theoretic account for vowel-consonant metathesis and vowel epenthesis in Nivaĉle. It is demonstrated that metathesis responds to phonological requirements; specifically, it serves to avoid marked structures in the language: complex codas, derived complex onsets, and bad syllable contacts. The prosodic analysis of syllable structure constraints aims to provide broad empirical coverage, as well as a coherent and integrated theoretical interpretation.

Google Mini: Italian Example of Artificial Prosociality

Prosociality is a social and individual virtue, which evokes mixed feelings in the modern world. Generally, prosociality behavior is defined as “actions taken for the benefit of one or more other persons” (Wispe, 1972). The Digital Revolution and the birth of artificial intelligence, such as the Google Mini, allowed the transition from elitist experience to mass experience. The study has an exploratory function and starts from the Man-AI interaction, in a provocative and oppositional conversational context created by the Human Being. In the research, it is hypothesized, therefore, that the synthesis of the artificial voice does not allow to characterize all the facets of the tone and the emotionality of the prosociality. As a result, Artificial Intelligence is programmed to always respond in a “gentle” way, putting in place different facets of prosociality, which are well detected in the emotionality and prosodic analysis, above all in the recognition of “pitch” speech pattern. While emotional tone analysis confirms the “understanding” of reading the communicative context of Artificial Intelligence. Among future perspectives it is highlighted how the study of these vocal patterns of artificial prosociality can be a springboard for research on bullying, using the Google Mini Prosocial tool.

Poetry and British Nationalisms in the Bardic Eighteenth Century: Imagined Antiquities. Jeff Strabone. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Pp. xv+351.

Poetry and British Nationalisms in the Bardic Eighteenth Century: Imagined Antiquities. Jeff Strabone. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Pp. xv+351.

Sociophonetic trends in studies of Southern U.S. English.

Although the U.S. South was usually avoided for phonetic studies in earlier years, phonetic analyses of Southern U.S. English have expanded in numerous directions in recent years. Studies of vocalic variation have dominated the enterprise, with a broad range of studies that have examined the phonetic peculiarities and distribution of variants within the region, the characteristics of particular communities, and the phonetic attributes of African American and Latino groups. However, other phonetic phenomena are finally seeing more study. Several consonantal variables have attracted acoustic analysis. Other studies have focused on intonation and certain timing-related phenomena. Numerous experimental studies have tested the abilities of listeners to identify dialects and a few other perceptual issues. These developments are outlined here, including advancements in segmental, prosodic, and perceptual analyses.

Analysis of Linguistic and Prosodic Features of Bilingual Arabic–English Speakers for Speech Emotion Recognition

Speech emotion recognition (SER) research has usually focused on the analysis of the native language of speakers, most commonly, targeting European and Asian languages. In the present study, a bilingual Arabic/English speech emotion database elicited from 16 male and 16 female Egyptian participants was created in order to investigate how the linguistic and prosodic features were affected by the anger, fear, happiness and sadness emotions across Arabic and English emotional speech. The results of the linguistic analysis indicated that the participants preferred to express their emotions indirectly, mainly using religious references, and that the female participants tended to use language that was more tentative and emotionally expressive, while the male participants tended to use language that was more assertive and independent. As for the prosodic analysis, statistical t-tests showed that the prosodic features of pitch, intensity and speech rate were more indicative of anger and happiness while less relevant to fear and scarcely significant for sadness. Furthermore, speech emotion recognition performed using linear support vector machine (SVM) with AdaBoost also supported these results. In regard to first and second language linguistic features, there was no significant difference in the choice of words and structures expressing the different emotions in the two languages, but in terms of prosodic features, the females' speech showed higher pitch in Arabic in all cases while both genders showed close intensity values in the two languages and faster speech rate in Arabic than in English.

Let's talk about pain and opioids: Low pitch and creak in medical consultations.

In recent years, the opioid crisis in the United States has sparked significant discussion on doctor-patient interactions concerning chronic pain treatments, but little to no attention has been given to investigating the vocal aspects of patient talk. This exploratory sociolinguistic study intends to fill this knowledge gap by employing prosodic discourse analysis to examine context-specific linguistic features used by the interlocutors of two distinct medical interactions. We found that patients employed both low pitch and creak as linguistic resources when describing chronic pain, narrating symptoms, and requesting opioids. The situational use of both features informs us about the linguistic ways in which patients frame fraught issues like chronic pain in light of the current opioid crisis. This study expands the breadth of phonetic analysis within the domain of discourse analysis, serving to illuminate discussions surrounding the illocutionary role of the lower vocal tract in expressing emotions.

Free NPs as units in Finnish

AbstractThis article focuses on free NPs, i.e. noun phrases that are grammatically not part of any clause but form units of their own. Using the methodology of discourse-functional and interactional linguistics, I analyze the morphosyntactic, prosodic and interactional features of free NPs in conversational Finnish. With its rich morphological marking, Finnish provides an interesting perspective on free NPs: Morphosyntactic features, together with semantics, are crucial in determining the status of an NP as a clausal constituent or a free NP. The prosodic analysis shows that the majority of free NPs show clear prosodic boundaries, signalled for example by speaker change, coherent intonation contour, pause or pitch reset. Free NPs serve various interactional functions, such as making assessments or disambiguating referents. These are functions which operate on something already established in the discourse. Free NPs, however, can also initiate something new for example by making requests or introducing new topics.

A Prosodic Analysis of English Sermons of Selected Pastors in Southwest Nigeria

A Prosodic Analysis of English Sermons of Selected Pastors in Southwest Nigeria

Victorian Soul-Talk: Poetry, Democracy, and the Body Politic. Julia F. Saville. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Pp. xii+307.

<i>Victorian Soul-Talk: Poetry, Democracy, and the Body Politic</i>. Julia F. Saville. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Pp. xii+307.

Acting in action: Prosodic analysis of character portrayal during acting.

During the process of acting, actors have to embody the characters that they are portraying by changing their vocal and gestural features to match standard conceptions of the characters. In this experimental study of acting, we had professional actors portray a series of stock characters (e.g., king, bully, lover), which were organized according to a predictive scheme based on the 2 orthogonal personality dimensions of assertiveness and cooperativeness. We measured 12 prosodic features of the actors' vocal productions, as related to pitch, loudness, timbre, and duration/timing. The results showed a significant effect of character assertiveness on all 12 vocal parameters, but a weaker effect of cooperativeness on fewer vocal parameters. These findings comprise the first experimental analysis of vocal gesturing during character portrayal in actors and demonstrate that actors reliably manipulate prosodic cues in a contrastive manner to differentiate characters based on their personality traits. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).