Search results for "Prosody"

Hacia una propuesta metodológica para el estudio de la atenuación fónica en Es.Var.Atenuación

2017

espanolEl proyecto Es.Var.Atenuacion se interesa por el estudio de la atenuacion pragmatica a nivel linguistico, estructural, enunciativo y situacional, en corpus discursivos del espanol, a fin de reconocer las posibles estrategias atenuantes de un acto comunicativo. Para llevar a cabo el analisis se parte de una ficha de trabajo (Briz y Albelda, 2013. Una propuesta teorica y metodologica para el analisis de la atenuacion linguistica en espanol y portugues. La base de un proyecto comun (ES. POR.ATENUACION). Onomazein, 28, pp. 288–319; Albelda, Briz, Cestero, Kotwica y Villalba, 2014. Ficha metodologica para el analisis pragmatico de la atenuacion en corpus discursivos del espanol. (ES.POR.A…

Prosodic modulation as a mark to express pragmatic values: The case of mitigation in Spanish

2021

Abstract One of the functions of prosody in discourse is to convey pragmatic values that add up to the core semantic meaning of spoken units or segments. Regarding mitigation, Caffi (1999: 890) specifically discusses “the very important prosodic and kinesic means of mitigation, such as changes in pitch prominence, rhythm, speech rate, as well as eye-contact, gaze, gaze aversion, smile, particular postures, etc.” In this paper, I focus on some prosodic factors such as pitch, intensity, duration and speech rate that can be used in European Spanish, in combination with pragmatic meanings. The first aim is to establish a theoretical deliberation on prosody as a clear marker to convey pragmatic …

The look of writing in reading. Graphetic empathy in making and perceiving graphic traces

2021

This article presents preliminary considerations and results from a research project designed to investigate the relation between (i) gestures, (ii) graphic traces and (iii) perceptions. More specifically, the project aims to test the hypothesis that graphic traces, including handwriting, can set up graphetic empathy between writers and readers of traces across long temporal and spatial distances. Insofar as a graphic trace is lawfully related to the gesture by which it came into being, the trace itself will hold information about the gesture, which may resonate with the sensorimotor system of a perceiver as if they themselves performed the gesture. If this is in fact so, it will have impor…

Provoke or encourage improvements? On semantic prosody in English-to-Polish translation

2021

Originally defined as an aura of meaning associated with words used together in a particular context, semantic prosody is a complex linguistic concept, and there is no agreement among researchers as to its precise definition and level of operationalization (word, phrase, text or discourse). Although there have been some studies on semantic prosody in translation, their findings are rather inconclusive and limited to individual words and phrases. Also, there has been no research on semantic prosody conducted so far in Polish-English translation. Intending to fill in this gap, this paper, grounded in corpus linguistics, showcases the role of semantic prosody in a selected English-to-Polish tr…

Soft Prosody and Embodied Attunement in Therapeutic Interaction: A Multimethod Case Study of a Moment of Change

2016

This study focused on a moment of weeping in one psychotherapy case. The overall aim was toexplore the role of “soft prosody” in psychotherapy interaction—that is, the participants’ use ofpauses, a lower volume, slower rhythms, and softer intonation than in the surrounding speech. Amixed-method, micro-analytic perspective was applied to investigate (a) social interaction, includ-ing its verbal and nonverbal elements; (2) the participants’ bodily responses, including autonomicnervous system (ANS) measurements; and (3) the participants’ thoughts and feelings during thetherapy session, as reported in subsequent individual interviews. Soft prosody was observed to be animportant conversational t…

Chapter 12. Focus, prosody, and subject positions in L3 Spanish

2018

Chapter 6. Prosody, genres and evidentiality in Spanish

2018

Linguistic Bias Modulates Interpretation of Speech via Neural Delta-Band Oscillations.

2017

Language comprehension requires that single words be grouped into syntactic phrases, as words in sentences are too many to memorize individually. In speech, acoustic and syntactic grouping patterns mostly align. However, when ambiguous sentences allow for alternative grouping patterns, comprehenders may form phrases that contradict speech prosody. While delta-band oscillations are known to track prosody, we hypothesized that linguistic grouping bias can modulate the interpretational impact of speech prosody in ambiguous situations, which should surface in delta-band oscillations when grouping patterns chosen by comprehenders differ from those indicated by prosody. In our auditory electroenc…

Pitch accent type affects the N400 during referential processing

2010

Discourse processing depends on semantic memory as well as maintaining and updating of a mental model. Using event-related potentials, we investigated how a referent's information status (new, accessible, given) is processed in combination with three different prosodic realizations (an appropriate accent and two inappropriate accents). The data reveal a biphasic N400-late positivity pattern, indicating that prosodic information affects an early discourse linking stage, during which prominence information reflecting a referent's accessibility is computed (N400), and a later discourse updating stage, during which conflicts between prosodic information and a referent's actual information statu…

Spring School on Language, Music, and Cognition: Organizing Events in Time

2018

The interdisciplinary spring school “Language, music, and cognition: Organizing events in time” was held from February 26 to March 2, 2018 at the Institute of Musicology of the University of Cologne. Language, speech, and music as events in time were explored from different perspectives including evolutionary biology, social cognition, developmental psychology, cognitive neuroscience of speech, language, and communication, as well as computational and biological approaches to language and music. There were 10 lectures, 4 workshops, and 1 student poster session.Overall, the spring school investigated language and music as neurocognitive systems and focused on a mechanistic approach exploring…