We are pleased to welcome Mariapaola D'Imperio (Rutgers University - USA) from May 31, 2021, to take over our International Chair.
The seminars will be held in videoconference on zoom (connection link below) from 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm:
Monday June 07
Thursday June 10th
Monday June 14th
Monday June 21st
A meeting will be organized after each seminar in a café near the Olympe de Gouges building to discuss with Professor D'Imperio in person. More details on these meetings will be communicated to you very soon.
Professor D'Imperio will also be available to meet with students who wish to do so during her stay. If you are interested, you can contact her at mdimperio2@gmail.com.
Join Zoom Meeting
Meeting ID: 970 0265 8930
Passcode: 544402
Abstract :
Traditionally, prosodic studies have focused on the study of intonational form on one side and the study of intonational meaning on the other, without paying full attention to the impact of details of the specific formal properties (nuclear vs prenuclear accent information, tonal alignment, phrasal location) and or phonetic information (boundary strength, ‘second occurrence’ focus, etc.) on meaning interpretation. As a result, there is no firm agreement within the linguistic community on how to integrate the analysis of intonational meaning across languages into a unified prosodic, semantic, and pragmatic approach.
Moreover, aspects of graduality in the expression of intonational form (e.g. pitch span information) have been largely ignored to the purpose of the expression and perception of potentially gradual pragmatic meaning, such as epistemic bias. Finally, the impact of socio-indexical and cognitive variables on intonation- meaning mapping is only starting to be uncovered (Estève-Gibert et al. 2020, Warren 2017, Portes & German 2019, Orrico & D’Imperio, in revision, Orrico et al. 2018, 2019a, 2019b, 2020, Cason et al. 2019, Dittinger et al. 2018, inter alia).
This seminar series will hence provide an overview of the literature on intonational meaning, covering recent advances in the fields of prosody and its interfaces with semantics/pragmatics. First, I will present the intonational phonology framework arguing that intonation is part of linguistic grammar, by showing typological differences that run counter a universal treatment of phonetic cues traditionally associated with prosody and intonation. I will then present an overview of meaning models of intonation touching upon issues of compositionality, modality, epistemic bias, and the many-to-many mapping of form and function. In the third seminar, I will dwell on different kinds of experimental evidence (intonation processing, discourse completion tasks, etc.) testing different theoretical assumptions and intonation perception issues (e.g. D’Imperio & Dorokhova 2019). I will finally present a hands-on tutorial aimed at helping high-level students and researchers in preparing perception stimuli to test intonation-meaning mapping with different techniques (Eyetracking, mousetracking, offline judgments, categorical perception, ERP studies).
Students are expected to do weekly readings and participate in class discussions.
Seminar one: Overview – I will provide the basic notions to understand what prosody and intonation are – specifically within the intonational phonology and AM model framework. A short intonation transcription session will be incorporated.
Seminar two: Intonation and Meaning – I will present current models of Intonation-Meaning mapping. I will also review findings on contextual interaction with intonation interpretation as well as the impact of co-speech gesture.
Seminar three: Experimental Evidence – I will explore issues such as categorical vs. gradual meaning interpretation as well as socio- indexical and individual cognitive variability in the tune-meaning mapping, both in production and offline/online perception studies. Among the topics explored: epistemic bias, empathy and intonation meaning perception, ‘ideal observer’ model, predictability. Data for various languages will be reviewed (French, Italian, American English, Catalan).
Seminar four: Workshop will focus on allowing EFL students to develop a use for these models in the context of their own research, specifically in the experimental design and perception stimuli preparation (e.g. PSOLA resynthesis). We will first observe and try to replicate American English contours in specific contexts, but with a view on French and other languages spoken by the students. Then we will create PSOLA resynthesized stimuli that could be the base of a perception experiment. Outside of the seminar, I will spend some time with each student to help them to find an insightful way to apply these techniques to their own research.
Obligatory and optional readings by session
1. The phonetic and phonological representation of intonation
Reetz & Jongman (2008). Phonetics. Ch. 11
Arvaniti, A. To appear [expected: 2020]. The Autosegmental-Metrical model of intonational phonology. In Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel & Jonathan Barnes (Eds), Prosodic Theory and Practice. The MIT Press. [pdf of submission]
Beckman, M.E., J. Hirschberg & S. Shattuck-Hufnagel (2006), ‘The original ToBI system and the evolution of the ToBI framework’. In S. Jun (Ed.), Prosodic Typology: The Phonology of Intonation and Phrasing, pp. 9-54. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Opt.: Ladd (2008) chapter 1, 2
2. Universal and Linguistic Meaning of intonation
Gussenhoven, C. 2002b. Intonation and interpretation: Phonetics and phonology. In Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2002, 47-57. Aix-en-Provence
Büring 2016. Intonation and meaning. OUP. Ch9 (The meaning of tones)
Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg 1990 The Meaning of Intonational contours in the Interpretation of Discourse, in P. Cohen, J. Morgan, and M. Pollack, (eds). Intentions in Communication, MIT Press, Cambridge MA. 271-311.
Goodhue, D. and M. Wagner. 2018. Intonation, yes and no. Glossa. Available here (open access). Accompanying sound files available here.
Opt.: Chen, A., Rietveld, T., & Gussenhoven, C. (2004) Language-Specificity in the Perception of Paralinguistic Intonational Meaning. Language and Speech. 2004;47(4):311-349. doi:10.1177/00238309040470040101
Opt.: Chikulaeva, A. & D’Imperio, M. (2018). The expression of politeness and pitch height in Russian imperatives. Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2018, Poznan, Poland, June 13-16 2018.
3. Experimental and corpus evidence
Vanrell, M.M., Mascaró, I., Torres-Tamarit, F. & Prieto, P. 2013. Intonation as an encoder of speaker's certainty: information and confirmation yes-no questions. Language and Speech 56(2), 163-190.
Goodhue, Dan, Harrison, Lyana, Su, Y. T. Clementine, and Wagner, Michael (2016). [Toward a bestiary of English intonational tunes. In Hammerly, C. and Prickett, B., editors, Proceedings of the 46th Conference of the North Eastern Linguistic Society (NELS), Concordia University, pages 311–320. http://prosodylab.org/data/bestiary/bestiary-risingcontours/
Ito, K. & Speer, S. R. (2008). ‘Anticipatory effect of intonation: eye movements during instructed visual search’. Journal of Memory and Language 58, 541 –73.
Opt. Watson, D., Arnold, J. A., & Tanenhaus, M. K. (2008). Tic Tac TOE: Effects of predictability and importance on acoustic prominence in language production. Cognition, 106, 1548-1557. (and corrigendum)
Opt. German, J. & D’Imperio, M. (2016). The Status of the Initial Rise as a Marker of Focus in French, Language and Speech, vol. 59(2): 165-195.
4. Methods for experimental evidence for intonational meaning
D'Imperio, M. (2012). ‘Prosodic representations.’ In A. Cohn, C. Fougeron & M. Huffman (Eds.), Handbook of Laboratory Phonology. Oxford: Oxford University Press (section on tonal alignment).
Esteve-Gibert, N., Schafer, A., Hemforth, B., Portes, C., Pozniak, C. & D’Imperio, M. (2020). ‘Intonation and empathy in the online processing of contrastive meaning in French’. Memory & Cognition, 48(4), 566-580. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-019-00990-w
D’Imperio, M. & Dorokhova, L. (2019). ‘Rise shape dynamics is sufficient to distinguish question and continuation rises in French’. Poster presentation, PaPE 2019, Lecce, Italy, 17-19 June 2019. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.25207.47522.
Opt. Watson D.G., Gunlugson C. & Tanenhaus M.K. (2006). ‘Online methods for the investigation of prosody’. In: Saube A, editor. Methods in empirical prosody research. Leipzig: Mouton de Gruyter; 2006. pp. 259–282. [Google Scholar]
References
- Arvaniti, A. To appear [expected: 2020]. ‘The Autosegmental-Metrical model of intonational phonology’. In Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel & Jonathan Barnes (Eds), Prosodic Theory and Practice. The MIT Press. [pdf of submission]
- Arvaniti, A. & G. Garding (2007). ‘Dialectal variation in the rising accents of American English’. In J. Cole & J. H. Hualde (Eds.), Papers in Laboratory Phonology 9, pp. 547-576. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
- Beckman, M.E., J. Hirschberg & S. Shattuck-Hufnagel (2006), ‘The original ToBI system and the evolution of the ToBI framework’. In S. Jun (Ed.), Prosodic Typology: The Phonology of Intonation and Phrasing, pp. 9-54. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Bolinger D. L. (1982). ‘Intonation and its parts’. Language, 58 (3) (1982), pp. 505-533
- Büring, D. (2016). Intonation and meaning. OUP. Ch. 1, 9 (The meaning of tones).
- Büring, D. (2012). "Focus and Intonation". In: Gillian Russell and Delia Graff Fara (eds), Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Language. London: Routledge. 103-115.
- Burton, S. & Matthewson, L. (2015). ‘Targeted construction storyboards in semantic fieldwork’. In M. Ryan Bochnak & Lisa Matthewson (eds.), Methodologies in semantic fieldwork. New York: Oxford University Press, 135–156.
- Cason, N., Marmursztejn, M., D'Imperio M. & Schön, D. (2019). “Rhythmic abilities predict L2 prosody imitation in typologically different languages”. Language and Speech, 63(1), 149–165. https://doi.org/10.1177/0023830919826334
- Chen, A., Rietveld, T., & Gussenhoven, C. (2004). ‘Language-Specificity in the Perception of Paralinguistic Intonational Meaning’. Language and Speech. 2004;47(4):311-349. doi:10.1177/00238309040470040101
- Chikulaeva, A. & D’Imperio, M. (2018). ‘The expression of politeness and pitch height in Russian imperatives’. Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2018, Poznan, Poland, June 13-16 2018.
- D'Imperio, M. (2012). ‘Prosodic representations. In A. Cohn, C. Fougeron & M. Huffman (Eds.), Handbook of Laboratory Phonology. Oxford: Oxford University Press (section on tonal alignment).
- D’Imperio, M. & Dorokhova, L. (2019). ‘Rise shape dynamics is sufficient to distinguish question and continuation rises in French’. Poster presentation, PaPE 2019, Lecce, Italy, 17-19 June 2019. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.25207.47522.
- Esteve-Gibert, N., Schafer, A., Hemforth, B., Portes, C., Pozniak, C. & D’Imperio, M. (2020). ‘Intonation and empathy in the online processing of contrastive meaning in French’. Memory & Cognition, 48(4), 566-580. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-019-00990-w
- German, J. & D’Imperio, M. (2016). ‘The Status of the Initial Rise as a Marker of Focus in French’, Language and Speech, vol. 59(2): 165-195.
- Goodhue, Dan, Harrison, Lyana, Su, Y. T. Clementine, and Wagner, Michael (2016). [Toward a bestiary of English intonational tunes. In Hammerly, C. and Prickett, B., editors, Proceedings of the 46th Conference of the North Eastern Linguistic Society (NELS), Concordia University, pages 311–320. http://prosodylab.org/data/bestiary/bestiary-risingcontours/
- Goodhue, D. and M. Wagner (2018). ‘Intonation, yes and no’. Glossa. Available here (open access). Accompanying sound files available here.
- Gunulgson, C. (2008). ‘A question of commitment’. Belgian Journal of Linguistics, 22(1), 101-136. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/bjl.22.06gun
- Gussenhoven, C. 2002b. ‘Intonation and interpretation: Phonetics and phonology’. In Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2002, 47-57. Aix-en-Provence
- Hirschberg, J. and Ward, G. (1995). ‘The Interpretation of the High-Rise Question Contour in English’, Journal of Pragmatics 24(5):407–412.
- Ito, K. & Speer, S. R. (2008). ‘Anticipatory effect of intonation: eye movements during instructed visual search’. Journal of Memory and Language 58, 541 –73.
- Ladd, D.R. (2008). Intonational Phonology. CUP Press. (chap. 3, 6, 7).
- Ladd, R.D. (1981). A first look at the semantics and pragmatics of negative questions and tag questions. Proceedings of Chicago Linguistics Society (CLS) vol. 17, pp. 164-171.
- Liberman, M. & Sag, I. (1974). ‘Prosodic form and discourse function’. In Papers from the Tenth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society. Chicago Linguistic Society, 416-427.
- Orrico, R. & D’Imperio, M. (2020). ‘Individual empathy levels affect gradual intonation-meaning mapping: The case of biased questions in Salerno Italian’. Laboratory Phonology: Journal of the Association for Laboratory Phonology 11(1): 12, pp. 1–39. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/labphon.238
- Orrico, R. & D’Imperio, M. (2020). ‘Tonal specification of speaker commitment in Salerno Italian wh-questions’. Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2020, Tokyo, Japan, May 25-28 2020.
- Orrico, R., Savy, R. & D’Imperio, M. (2019). ‘Individual variability in Salerno Italian intonation: evidence from read and spontaneous speech’. Oral presentation at the XV Convegno AISV, Arezzo (Italy), February 14-16 2019.
- Pierrehumbert, J. (1980). The Phonetics and Phonology of English Intonation. Unpublished MIT PhD dissertation.
- Pierrehumbert, J. & Hirschberg, J. (1990). The Meaning of Intonational contours in the Interpretation of Discourse, in P. Cohen, J. Morgan, and M. Pollack, (eds). Intentions in Communication, MIT Press, Cambridge MA. 271-311.
- Portes, C., & German, J. S. (2019). ‘Implicit effects of regional cues on the interpretation of intonation by Corsican French listeners’. Laboratory Phonology: Journal of the Association for Laboratory Phonology, 10(1), 22. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/labphon.162
- Reetz, H. & Jongman, A. (2008). Phonetics: Transcription, Production, Acoustics, and Perception. Wiley-Blackwell. Ch. 11
- Vanrell, M.M., Mascaró, I., Torres-Tamarit, F. & Prieto, P. (2013). ‘Intonation as an encoder of speaker's certainty: information and confirmation yes-no questions’. Language and Speech 56(2), 163-190.
- Ward, G. & Hirschberg, J. (1985). ‘Implicating uncertainty: The pragmatics of fall-rise intonation’. Language 61:747–776.
- Warren, P. (2017). ‘The interpretation of prosodic variability in the context of accompanying sociophonetic cues’’. Laboratory Phonology, 8(1), 11. http://doi.org/10.5334/labphon.92
- Watson, D., Arnold, J. A., & Tanenhaus, M. K. (2008). ‘Tic Tac TOE: Effects of predictability and importance on acoustic prominence in language production’. Cognition, 106, 1548-1557. (and corrigendum)
- Watson D.G., Gunlugson C. & Tanenhaus M.K. (2006). ‘Online methods for the investigation of prosody’. In: Saube A, editor. Methods in empirical prosody research. Leipzig: Mouton de Gruyter; 2006. pp. 259–282. [Google Scholar]
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