Course description

Most if not all recent studies of sentence intonation adopt the theoretical views developed by Pierrehumbert-Beckman, including the ToBI set of notation tools to describe intonation events. We will depart from this dominant approaches to propose a different way to describe sentence intonation in languages such as French, Italian, Spanish, Romanian, English and European and Brazilian Portuguese.

Our approach is equally based on the existence of a Prosodic Structure (PS) in the sentence, which entertains a sovereignty-association relationship with the syntactic structure. This means that the PS organizes units (the prosodic words) as the syntactic structure does organize syntactic units, but independently as it has to conform with its own constraint rules, such as a) a stress clash condition, b) a syntactic collision rule (that prevents two prosodic words dominated by distinct nodes in the syntactic structure to form a prosodic group), and c) a rhythmic rule (which plays an essential role in French for example).

The prosodic structure is not defined by specific motives, but rather by melodic movements located on stressed and final syllables (these two being merged in the case of French). Looking at these pitch movements, in the light of the possible effects of neutralization processes, we can clearly establish, based on numerous experimental data, grammars of intonation for various languages.

Examples of applications in speech synthesis and language teaching will also be discussed.

Course Planning

1. Historical developments – ToBI or not ToBI
2. The Prosodic Structure – Properties and Constraints
3. Experimental Intonation Phonology – Acoustic analysis
4. Sentence modality, broad and narrow focus
5. Prosody and Syntax: Sovereignty – Association
6. Prosodic markers processes, Intonation grammar for English, French and other Romance Languages
7. Spontaneous Speech
8. Applications in speech synthesis and language teaching

Recommended preparatory reading

• Ladd, Robert (1996) Intonation Phonology, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 334 p.
• Martin, Ph. (1987) Prosodic and Rhythmic Structures in French, Linguistics, 925-949.

Lectures

1. Intonation and syntax: another point of view ()

   When we speak, when we read, even silently, a musical movement inevitably accompanies our words, constituting sentence intonation. For a long time, linguists have relegated the tune of the sentence to the study of emotions and social attitudes, with the exception of a very limited role given to intonation in the language system, namely the indication of the declarative or interrogative modality of the sentence.

2. The Prosodic Structure in French: Properties and Constraints ()

   In this lesson we will attempt to formalize the properties of the prosodic structure and define its relationship with the syntactic structure of the sentence applied to French data.

3. Intonation in spontaneous speech – part 1 ()

   In these lessons we will examine how intonation plays a crucial role in spontaneous speech, putting together short well formed syntactic macro segments in spontaneous speech. Part 1 is devoted to technical aspects of spontaneous speech corpora.

4. Intonation in spontaneous speech – part 2 ()

   In this lesson, we will describe an innovative approach to describe the interaction between syntax and intonation, based on a macro syntactic model integrating prosodic components.

5. Intonation theory: Autosegmental vs. Phonosyntactic ()

   This lesson will examine some intonation facts of Portuguese (European and Brazilian) in the light of two very different approaches: autosegmental and phonosyntactic. This exercise should provide a better and deeper understanding of differences that might exist between both theories, and should illustrate as well how apparently clear theoretical distinctions lead to very different interpretations of similar phenomena.