Prosodic Means Research Articles

Анализ влияния просодических единиц и интонационных моделей персидского языка у иранских студентов на выражение ИК-7 в русском языке

Iranian students of Russian often experience problems with phonetics and pronunciation that hinder their listening comprehension. Pronunciation mistakes and native-language interference are the main problems Iranian students have to face while studying Russian. No textbooks in Iran introduce a comparative analysis of Russian and Persian phonetic systems. This research was an attempt to compare the intonation systems of both languages in order to help Iranian students to master Intonation Pattern No.7 and develop their communication skills in the Russian language. Oral speech of 17 Iranian students was processed phonetically and acoustically using PRAAT 6.2.10. This program used pitch and intensity filters to analyze Russian Intonation Pattern No. 7 and visualize speech sounds as graphs. Intonation is a set of prosodic means that segments and structures speech flow in accordance with the message intended. In both languages, intonation patterns convey meaning and express emotions. In this study, native intonation pool prevented the Iranian students from imitating Russian Intonation Pattern No. 7. This comparative acoustic analysis of Russian and Persian intonation systems will help Iranian students to prevent phonetic, rhythmic, and intonation errors in Russian. The results can be used by students, second-language teachers, speech therapists, and communication specialists.

Embodied interaction with face masks and social distancing

Abstract In this article, we ask how interlocutors proceed with their daily activities in the first months of the Covid-19 pandemic when faced with new ways of communication due to social distancing and the use of face masks. We carried out a fine-grained analysis of different micropractices from daily work in a healthcare center in Brazil and built our analysis on multimodal conversation analysis (MCA), interactional linguistics (IC), as well as gesture studies (GS). The analysis revealed that particularly the following recurrent patterns seem to be characteristic for communication during the pandemic in the given microcontexts: (a) a high use of deictic gestures, (b) an intensification of prosodic means, (c) verbal strategies such as reformulation and repetition, (d) the integration of object manipulation and (e) mitigation strategies in case of new formats that imply intrusion such as controls at travel checkpoints.

Prosodic features of public speech in Chinese political discourse

The article addresses the prosodic features of Chinese political speech, conducting an in-depth analysis through the lens of existing research by Ukrainian and Chinese linguists. The scientists emphasize the pivotal role of prosodic characteristics of political speech in shaping the audience’s perception of the speech text within the realm of political discourse. The study delves into the concept of political discourse in modern linguistics, dissecting its features and associated political rhetoric. It emphasizes the vital role of prosody and its pragmatic influence in political communication, substantiating the importance of employing prosodic means in the construction of political speech to outline the dominants of the text content and emotional impact on the listener. The author determines prosody as a crucial component of political discourse and finds out that Chinese political speech is characterized by a pronounced logical and phrasal accentuation, slower speaker’s speech rate, and longer pauses before and after semantically significant words and phrases that are of important semantic significance for the entire speech. Notably, the research findings demonstrate that the speaker changes the rhythm of the statement in order to overcome monotony and draw attention to the significant parts of the speech. Illustrating these findings with examples from the speech deliveredby Chinese President Xi Jinping in October 2022 to representatives of the Chinese Communist Party, the study shows how the rhythmical adjustments in the speaker’s statement effectively mitigate monotony. The author determines the specifics of the implementation of Chinese-language political discourse through the mechanism of prosody and concludes that the effectiveness of public speech depends on its sound patterns, demonstrating their capacity to enhance imagery and expressiveness of speech.

Интонация простых интеррогативных высказываний в алтайском языке

The paper presents preliminary results of a study based on experimental data on the intonation of a simple interrogative utterance in the Altai language. Based on the requested element, interrogative sentences can be divided into two types: full, referring to the entire sentence, and partial, which are questions. The purpose of a question determines whether it falls into the category of a modal one, to be answered by yes or no, or a dictal one, requiring additional information. Additionally, question types differ formally: dictal ones with interrogative words and modal ones with interrogative particles. Intonation is significant in expressing communicative goals and designing the syntactic structure of a sentence. The concept of intonation encompasses various prosodic methods for segmenting and organizing speech flow to convey the intended message. The intonation system is a complex combination of various prosodic means, including tonal, quantitative-dynamic, articulatory, and phonational. The experimental material for this study was recorded in the village of Yakonur, Ust-Khan district of the Altai Republic. The data were processed using the methodology adopted in the Laboratory of Experimental Phonetic Research of the Institute of Philology SB RAS. The analysis has revealed that the intonation contour of interrogative utterances in the Altai language varies depending on the presence and position of an interrogative marker. The peak of the intonation contour in questions falls on the interrogative word of the utterance. The pitch curve in questions exhibits a higher level of ending in comparison to the intonation of affirmative sentences.

Bilingual exposure might enhance L1 development in Cantonese-English bilingual autistic children: Evidence from the production of focus.

It is commonly believed among professionals and parents that exposure to two languages imposes an additional burden on children with autism spectrum disorder. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence to support or reject this belief. With the prevalence of autism and an increasing number of children growing up bilingual, it is urgent to understand how bilingual exposure interacts with autism. Bilingual autistic children from Hong Kong, with Cantonese as their first language and English as their second language, took part in the study. We used a production game to test how bilingual autistic children use different levels of linguistic knowledge to produce contrastive information in real conversations, compared to their monolingual autistic peers and typically developing children matched in language abilities, nonverbal IQ, working memory and maternal education. We found that bilingual autistic children performed as good as typically developing children in general, and they even performed better than monolingual autistic children. Our findings suggest a bilingual advantage in autistic children in conveying constative information in sentences. We thus encourage parents to engage their children in rich bilingual environments. Clinicians, educators and other professionals may also consider adding bilingual aspects in training programmes to support families raising bilingual autistic children.

MELODY OF AN ORAL RELIGIOUS SERMON

The article is devoted to the study of the melodic organization of the texts of Anglican and Lutheran sermons, which are an integral part of services in the respective churches. Examining the compositional features of the texts of the researched sermons made it possible to identify four compositional parts that are necessarily present in both types of sermons (topic manifestation, citation, interpretation, conclusion), each of which is characterized by relative semantic and structural independence and pursues a specific pragmatic task. The research material, consisting of oral English and German sermons, was subjected to perceptual, auditory and instrumental analysis. A complex auditory and instrumental analysis of the melodic characteristics of preachers’ speech allows us to conclude that there is unity not only in the pragmatic tasks of preachers in the two most common Protestant trends, but also in the prosodic features of the texts of oral sermons. Integral melodic parameters include the use of emphatic phrasal stress on informative and/or emotionally significant parts of phrases in supraphrasal units, the distribution of maximums of the fundamental frequency over the compositional parts of the text, the width of the frequency range of phrases, which is achieved not only at the expense of high indicators of maxima fundamental frequency in sermon phrases, but also due to lowering the lower limit of fundamental frequency values. Distinctive features include the use of different pitch levels in peculiar parts of the text: in the initial part of the Anglican sermon, there is a predominance of low pitch level, while in the Lutheran sermon, the low voice level is the most used in the final part of the sermon. On the basis of the identified integral prosodic means involved in the organisation of the analysed texts, it is possible to state that Anglican and Lutheran sermons belong to the same type of preaching discourse.

PROSODIC CHARACTERISTICS OF EMPHATHIC STATEMENTS IN FRENCH POLEMICAL DISCOURSE

The article discusses the problem of prosodic means of expressing emphasis in French on the basis of polemical discourse. Two types of emphasis are distinguished - local (lexical) and global (supralexical) and the prosodic characteristics of global emphasis are analyzed. It is shown that, unlike the lexical one, the supralexical emphasis is reflected in the prosodic organization of the phrase as a whole. Based on the results of auditory and acoustic analysis of utterances, a classification of tonal contours expressing global emphasis is proposed, and the accent-melodic and dynamic characteristics of the components of the contour structure – the pre-nuclear part and the nuclear tone, which have not yet received coverage in works on the prosody of French speech, are described.

Pragmatic Value of Hedging in British Political Discourse

Hedging is part and parcel of any discourse (either oral or written). It’s worth mentioning that the functions of hedges are not totally agreed on by the scholars. However, they all admit the multifunctional nature of this phenomenon and its dependence on the context. Mostly hedges imply lack of commitment, indicate politeness (negative and positive), fuzziness, lack of certainty, protecting one’s ego. Despite the extensive research carried out in this area, there are not so many studies that address the issue of hedging in political discourse. The aim of the present study is to analyse pragmatic value of hedging as a means of persuasion and manipulation. Main focus is given to prosodic features and their strategic role in hedging. The material comprises speeches of British politicians at conferences, press conferences, in British Parliament and political debates. The observations made in the paper proved that prosodic means (either in complex with other verbal means or in isolation) contribute to pragmatic effect of hedging in political discourse as a valuable tool to persuade people, to shape their opinion, to mark “us vs them” opposition, protect one’s ego and lack of personal involvement.

THE COMMUNICATIVE MEANS OF MANIPULATING A SUSPECT USED BY A WOMAN-DETECTIVE

The article is devoted to the analysis of the communicative strategy of manipulation and communicative tactics, that manifest it. The research of communicative strategies and tactics instills the respect of wealthy domestic and foreign linguists. The topicality of the study of strategies and tactics is motivated by the various points of view on this issue which results in the ambiguity of the explanation. The article is an attempt to trace the mechanism of manipulation, applied by a woman-detective during the investigation. The analysis is based on the data from English detective novels. The object of the study is the characters’ speech: the woman detective’s interrogation of witnesses and suspects. The scope of the study is the communicative tactics applied by the woman detective to manipulate witnesses and suspects. The purpose is cognitive and pragmatic analysis of the communicative tactics applied by the female detective to manipulate the witnesses and suspects. The investigation is based on the general and special linguistic methods: synthesis and analysis, method of observation, descriptive method, pragmatic and linguistic method, cognitive method, analysis of contextual interpretation. The main results of the study. As a result of the carried out research, we can claim that one of the communicative strategies used by the female detective is the strategy of manipulation. It is explained by communicative tactics of provocation, warning, threats, blackmail, flattery, as well as tactics of false self-presentation. Each of these tactics is marked by certain lexical, syntactic and stylistic means of speech. The ability to control the communicative process and adjust one’s speech actions at individual stages of the dialogue can be considered key to achieving the communicative goal of a female detective. The prospect of further research is a versatile study of linguistic mechanisms of exerting a manipulative influence on the recipient in artistic discourse. The perspective for further research is seen in identifying prosodic means of manipulative impact on the recipient in film discourse.

A prosodic comparison of two types of response tokens in Mandarin Chinese and English

We present an investigation of the phonetic characteristics of the response tokens yeah (English) and dui (Mandarin) which, in spoken conversation, can be used either as backchannel items (not initiating a new turn) or as reply tokens (taking the floor). On the basis of two telephone corpora, we investigate whether there are prosodic differences (specifically: pitch, duration, and intensity) between these two types of uses. We find that the most consistent prosodic cue that distinguishes the two, both in Mandarin and English, is intensity, with mixed results for pitch and no role for duration in either language. The pragmatic difference between a reply and a backchannel token is thus signalled by its position in the sequence but reinforced by prosodic means. The way in which this is achieved, i.e. by intensity, involves the cue that is the least likely to upset existing lexical contrasts, both in English and Mandarin.

Словесний наголос в українській та німецькій мовах: міжмовні співвідношення

Nowadays typological studies of related and unrelated languages are becoming of great importance. Appealing to historic, comparatively-synchronous, contrastive parallels of several languages opens up the possibility of highlighting the certain features of their historical and cultural development. Scientific research studies of such kind help to clarify the universal, common and distinctive features of comparative languages, as well as to substantiate the uniqueness of every language as a national phenomenon. Important for contrastive phonetics is the study of super-segmental means, in particular prosodic means, that is stress and intonation. In comparative linguistics to identify the peculiarities of stress in comparative languages can be used such criteria: nature of stress, the place of stress in a word, quality of stress and function of stress. These criteria were taken in to account in our research because they give quite objective data for achieving the goal. This article is devoted to the comparative study of verbal stress in the Ukrainian and German languages. The object of our study is verbal stress in the Ukrainian and German languages, which distinguishes and differs a word from the speech flow – the basic unit of the language mechanism of a particular language. There is considered the means of distinguishing the stressed syllable, the ratio of longitude and stress of a vowel sound, the place of stress in a word, functions of word stress. The main regularities of the accent norm of parts of speech in the Ukrainian and German languages. In the course of study, we came to the conclusion that in the Ukrainian and German languages the stressed syllable is characterized by dynamism, duration and expressiveness of timbre, that is dynamic stress is typical for both languages. Both languages have different place of stress in the word. With some apprehension, it can be considered a fixed accent in the German language, where the first sellable is mainly stressed (there are some rare exception, so it cannot be called a typical feature). In the Ukrainian language the accent is diverse and mobile, there are certain patterns of accent norm of parts of speech. Such free dynamic stress has a significative function, it distinguishes the grammatical forms of lexeme and the meaning of words. However, In the German language, in cases where the accent is free, the significative function is also used. In both compared languages we can find a side accent in addition to the main accent. Complex words have such accent. In the Ukrainian language the side stress is the first and the main stress is the second; in the German language, the main stress is the first and the side stress is the second. Common for all types of stress is the culminative function (design of word through the allocation of its prosodic center). Mobile stress has a significative (word-distinguishing) function.

Correlation between Prosodic Means and Accentuating Gestures in Cross-cultural Communication (based on British and American cross-cultural discourse)

Correlation between Prosodic Means and Accentuating Gestures in Cross-cultural Communication (based on British and American cross-cultural discourse)

Prosodic means’ interaction in realising the anecdote humorous effect

In the paper, on the basis of auditory analysis of English spoken anecdotes the authors come up with the system of prosodic means that serve to create the text humorous effect. To define the specificity of a complex interaction of emotional, pragmatic, structural and semantic factors of prosodic means’ functioning in English anecdotes, we substantiated two algorithmic models presenting the text story-line development: one being similar to the structure of the fairy tale (introduction → commentary → code), and the other one resembling the riddle (topic → commentary → code). By way of using these models as well as the traditional method of linguistic interpretation of the auditory analysis results, the authors substantiate the specificity of prosodic, lexico-grammatical and stylistic means interaction of an English anecdote oral actualisation functioning within its structural components. It has been found out that realisation of the anecdote humorous effect is ensured by the predominance of the unidirectional functioning of the language means of all levels with the leading role of prosodic means aimed at drawing the listeners’ attention to the anecdote’s two-plane semantics and its key lexical units, thus stimulating their thinking activities while decoding the humour of the anecdote. The authors come to the conclusion that the application of a functional-and-energetic approach to the study of a complex interaction of emotional, pragmatic, semantic and structural factors makes it possible to present a comprehensive description of invariant and variant prosodic patterns of any type of texts.

Lithuanian priegaidė: a syllable or a word feature?

The place of priegaidė ‘syllable intonation’ in the phonological system of Lithuanian remains uncertain; so does its typological peculiarity. The article aims to discover the specific nature of this phonological feature taking into consideration the opposition between phonemic (inflectional) and syllabemic (isolating) language types. Phonetically similar prosodic means in these languages show noticeable functional differences determined by the structure of the meaningful units they belong to. Inflectional languages develop a system of suprasegmental phonological features, which integrate parts of their normally composite units, whereas isolating languages usually do with monosyllabic words (naturally, without stress) and monolithic morphemes with tones as distinctive features. Standard Lithuanian has priegaidė only on the stressed syllables, therefore its system can be called polyaccentual (not polytonic), i. e. possessing several types of accent. The dialects, however, show examples of relevant priegaidė besides syllables with primary stress. In this, more general, system priegaidė functions as a suprasegmental feature of a morpheme (exposed to fading in weak positions). The traditional differentiation of syllables according to priegaidė is secondary: a syllable provides conditions for the realization of priegaidė, but being part of the plane of expression, not connected with meaning, the syllable itself does not need differentiation.

INAUGURAL SPEECH IN GERMAN AND ITS PROCEDURE IMPLEMENTATION

The article highlights the results of the study conducted to disclose the rhetorical potential of prosody in an inaugural speech. The material for the study was the speech delivered in 2017 by the President of the Federal Republic of Germany Frank-Walter Steinmeier. In this paper, prosody is considered from the standpoint of pragmaphonetics as one of the effective rhetorical means of persuasion, which not only forms the expressiveness of speech and makes political speeches more attractive to listeners, but also helps to achieve pragmatic goals of the speaker.The article analyzes the peculiarities of functioning of certain prosodic means (stress, pausation, speech melody, tempo and rhythm) during a politician’s public speech and defines the role of prosody in the implementation of functions specific to inaugural rhetoric. Through changes in the prosody of the speech some prosodic contrasts are created, which perform an expressive function, provide contact between the speaker and the audience, allow to avoid monotony and further enhance certain fragments of the message, thus drawing the listeners’ attention to the key concepts of the speech.According to the results of the experimental phonetic research, the importance of modifications of prosodic parameters for the realization of the communicative intentions of the speaker has been illustrated on the example of some fragments of the German president’s inaugural speech. It has been found that in order to increase the listeners’ attention, the speaker uses such prosodic means as more frequent emphasis, slowing tempo, frequent use of longer pauses, and speaking fragments of the message in an extended tone range.

The interaction of discourse markers and prosody in rhetorical questions in German

Recent research has shown that rhetorical questions (RQs) have certain prosodic characteristics in terms of voice quality, tempo, and intonation, which distinguish them from genuine, information-seeking questions (ISQs). This paper focuses on the interaction between prosodic cues to rhetorical meaning on the one hand, and lexical and morpho-syntactic means, on the other, in German. The production experiment reported on here addresses three research questions, in short: (i) do speakers prefer a specific syntactic construction for an RQ, (ii) do they make use of specific lexical and morpho-syntactic means to signal rhetorical meaning, and (iii) what is the interaction between those means and prosodic cues. The answers are: (i) yes (wh-questions), (ii) yes (especially discourse markers (DiPs)), and (iii) we find an additive effect enforcing the rhetorical message. When lexical (or morpho-syntactic) cues to rhetorical meaning are used, we do not observe a reduction in or lack of prosodic means at the same time. For example, when a DiP is present, an RQ will still have a typical nuclear accent and edge tone, i.e., cues are used in an additive, rather than an exclusive way. There are, however, RQs that are marked only in the prosody, without any lexical or morpho-syntactic cues present.

Story-“Record” vs Spontaneous Narrative in Light of a Comparative Analysis of Linguistic Feature

A memoir-type narrative as a structured text in a certain way, represented by at least two types of oral story: (1) a repeatedly reproduced narrative (a story about the war) and (2) an unprepared segment of a speech (a story about life in Irkutsk during the existence of the USSR and after its collapse) is considered in the article. The first variety in the scientific literature was called the “record” story. In the course of comparing the two fragments related to the mentioned types of narration, the phonetic, lexical and grammatical means used by the subject of speech and reflecting the specifics of the story-“record” on the theme of war are characterized. Thanks to an integrated approach to the linguistic features of the narrative, detailed conclusions are drawn regarding its organization. It has been established that at different linguistic levels the story-“record” has certain distinctive features, the most important of which are the use of functionally loaded prosodic means and the almost complete absence of speech failures, the use of a large number of bookish lexical elements, as well as grammatical structures characteristic of the official business language, written speeches. It is proved that all the identified features allow the speaker to give the features of a collectively significant memory to personal impressions of the war.

The Prosody of Directive Speech Acts: Pragmastylistic Aspect (On the Material of the Modern German Language)

The article represents the results of a phonetic experiment devoted to the study of pragmatically, and the stylistically determined manifestation of directive speech acts in the modern German language. The experiment allowed establishing the prosodic invariant of the directive speech act and describing variant patterns realized in diverse situational conditions which demonstrated a different degree of categoricalness and revealed their differential character on the level of prosodic expressive means. The research showed that pragmatic identification and stylistic differentiation of directive speech acts is realized utilizing all prosodic parameters - pitch, intensity and tempo. The complex analysis of pitch, intensity and tempo characteristics specific for situational variants of the directive illocutive allowed defining the level of involvement of these prosodic means in the functional realization of directive speech impact.

PROBLEMS OF PROSODY AND SOUNDING DISCOURSE IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Trying to combine speech recognition and natural language understanding to create a system capable of understanding conversational dialogues, we face a number of problems that are not encountered in text processing. Oral speech, as a rule, is more concise, less grammatically correct, less structured and more ambiguous than text, it is characterized by the absence of smooth fluency, processes of assimilation and reduction, divergence of syntactic and prosodic articulation of the speech sequence, temporal characteristics such as the length of pauses, the presence of hesitation pauses. , duration of speech segments, melodic characteristics. The interest of phoneticians is directed to the search for the causes of phonetic variability, to the study of the typology of the variability of sound phenomena of a general linguistic nature or specific, inherent in specific language groups.In addition, speech recognition systems that attempt to extract words from utterances typically result in word insertion, deletion, or substitution errors due to incorrect speech segmentation and perception. Prosodic means of intonation can be helpful in understanding the structure of a dialogue, as can parsing. This article presents some results of the use of prosodic means to convey semantic nuances in sounding discourse, the implementation of intonation functions and various approaches to the study of intonation ins ounding discourse.

THE VARIANT NATURE OF THE BRITISH WOMEN'S SPEECH BEHAVIOR

The question of prosodic variation in women’s speech has been analysed in the present article. Women’s of different social position (age and profession) speech behavior is in the centre of the given investigation. Women’s speech, being the subject of the analysis, allowed to reveal their specific peculiarities and arrange their speech behavior. The aim of the investigation is to define prosodic markers of women`s speech behavior. The subject of investigation is variation of women`s speech prosodic models. The object is unprepared monological speech of TV announcers and university lecturers as representatives of the analysed professions. The following tasks have been set: to distinguish main trends in gender linguistics, with the aim of defining speech behavior; to conduct phonetic analysis; to reveal differentiating prosodic characteristics, identifying women's speech behavior. In accordance with the aim and tasks of investigation, perceptive auditory analysis was applied which allowed to identify and interpret the analysed phonetic data and method of intoning was used to describe speech intonation. The concluded investigation allowed to analysed contemporary British women`s speech behavior with the help of prosodic peculiarities of their speech. The auditory analyses allowed to come to the following conclusions: speech behavior of successful women-announcer is characterized by prevalence of Falling Scale and Falling terminal tone, which identify them as confidant, categorical in speech women, who can convince interlocutors, influence them, as the main aim of announcers speech is to reach the listener, to make information maximum available and understandable. Speech behavior of university lecturers is characterised by more variable character. Their speech is dominated by Rising, Wavy scales, which is explained by peculiarities of the profession: they masterfully use their voice tember, and high tonality of speech testify their skills to adopt speech behavior to communication conditions. Thus prosodic means, which form during the act of communication may characterise the speaker`s originality, different by age and profession.