Differences in prosodic phrasing in marking syntax vs. focus: Data from Yanbian Korean

2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-150
Author(s):  
Sun-Ah Jun ◽  
Xiannu Jiang
Keyword(s):  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Head Noun ◽  
Pitch Accent ◽  
Dual Function ◽  
Prosodic Phrasing ◽  
Northeastern Part ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Word Prosody ◽  
Prosodic Boundary

Abstract In studying the effect of syntax and focus on prosodic phrasing, the main issue of investigation has been to explain and predict the location of a prosodic boundary, and not much attention has been given to the nature of prosodic phrasing. In this paper, we offer evidence from intonation patterns of utterances that prosodic phrasing can be formed differently phonologically and phonetically due to its function of marking syntactic structure vs. focus (prominence) in Yanbian Korean, a lexical pitch accent dialect of Korean spoken in the northeastern part of China, just above North Korea. We show that the location of a H tone in syntax-marking Accentual Phrase (AP) is determined by the type of syntactic head, noun or verb (a VP is marked by an AP-initial H while an NP is marked by an AP-final H), while prominence-marking accentual phrasing is cued by AP-initial H. The difference in prosodic phrasing due to its dual function in Yanbian Korean is compared with that of Seoul Korean, and a prediction is made on the possibility of finding such difference in other languages based on the prosodic typology proposed in (Jun, Sun-Ah. 2014b. Prosodic typology: by prominence type, word prosody, and macro-rhythm. In Sun-Ah Jun (ed.), Prosodic Typology II: The Phonology of Intonation and Phrasing. 520–539. Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Sequential Interpretation of Pitch Prominence as Contrastive and Syntactic Information: Contrast Comes First, but Syntax Takes Over

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 455-478
Author(s):  
Yuki Hirose
Keyword(s):  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Contextual Information ◽  
Pitch Accent ◽  
Visual Context ◽  
Syntactic Ambiguity ◽  
Visual World Paradigm ◽  
Contrastive Focus ◽  
Branching Structures ◽  
Syntactic Information ◽  
Prosodic Boundary

Pitch accent serves multiple duties (encoding lexical accent, syntactic structure, and focus) in spoken Japanese. This study investigates how listeners interpret a role-ambiguous pitch prominence surfacing as F0 rise, which could be a cue to the resolution of a syntactic ambiguity between two possible branching structures, or a signal of contrastive focus on the constituent accompanied by the rise. Two visual world paradigm experiments tested the same Japanese linguistic stimuli with and without pitch emphasis on the second word of structures of the following form: modifier + N1 + N2. In Experiment 1, the visual context suppressed the availability of the contrastive interpretation; in Experiment 2, the visual context made the contrastive interpretation available. We found that the same pitch event can be interpreted as both syntax-encoding and contrast-encoding information within the course of processing the same sentence, as long as contextual information is made visually available. When contrastive focus is pragmatically felicitous, it is computed immediately, as soon as the incoming input is accompanied by a notable pitch prominence (Experiment 2). The same prosodic cue can then be re-interpreted as a signal to syntax after the branching ambiguity is recognized due to subsequent input (Experiments 1 and 2). This is most consistent with the view that an initially assigned prosodic boundary is exploited for re-interpretation.

Iberia

2020 ◽  
pp. 250-270
Author(s):  
Sónia Frota ◽  
Pilar Prieto ◽  
Gorka Elordieta
Keyword(s):  
Crucial Role ◽  
Division Of Labour ◽  
Pitch Accent ◽  
Lexical Stress ◽  
The Other ◽  
Prosodic Structure ◽  
Prosodic Phrasing ◽  
Research Issues ◽  
Word Prosody

This chapter describes the main features of the prosodic systems of Basque, Catalan, Portuguese, and Spanish within the autosegmental-metrical (AM) model. In its word prosody, Basque comprises pitch-accent and stress systems, while the other languages differ in the distribution of final and antepenultimate lexical stress. A discussion of prosodic phrasing and phrasal prominence patterns reveals that accentual phrases play a crucial role in Basque, but not in Catalan, Spanish, or Portuguese, which differ in their higher prosodic structure. Melodic patterns vary in the complexity and distribution of pitch events as well as in their ability to express sentence modality and focus in collaboration with lexical and syntactic markers. The division of labour between prosodic and morphosyntactic encodings varies greatly, with Basque displaying a heavier syntactic load and the other languages having a more varied melodic functionality. Some unresolved research issues are highlighted.

scholarly journals Prosody and branching direction of phrasal compounds

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 21
Author(s):  
Hisao Tokizaki
Keyword(s):  
Head Noun ◽  
Prosodic Phrasing ◽  
Compound A ◽  
Prosodic Boundary ◽  
Edge Based ◽  
Match Theory ◽  
Japanese English

This paper investigates the prosody of phrasal compounds in Japanese, English and German. In a Japanese phrasal compound, a prosodic boundary can occur within a modifier phrase but not between the phrase and the head noun. Japanese phrasal compounds contrast with English and German phrasal compounds, where a pause may occur between the modifier phrase and the head noun but not within the modifier phrase. I argue that the prosodic differences between these languages are due to the branching direction of modifier phrases: Japanese phrasal compounds have left-branching modifiers while English and German phrasal compounds have right-branching modifiers. It is argued that the data of prosodic phrasing in these languages pose some problems for Match Theory (Elfner 2012), the edge-based theory (Selkirk & Tateishi 1988) and Generalized Insertion (Ackema & Neeleman 2004).

Postfocal Downstep in German

2016 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 260-288 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Kügler ◽  
Caroline Féry
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
German Journal ◽  
Pitch Accent ◽  
Prosodic Phrasing ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
Pitch Accents ◽  
Role Of Information

This article is a follow-up study of Féry and Kügler (2008. Pitch accent scaling on given, new and focused constituents in German. Journal of Phonetics, 36, 680–703). It reports on an experiment of the F0 height of potential pitch accents in the postfocal region of German sentences and addresses in this way an aspect of the influence of information structure on the intonation of sentences that was left open in the previous article. The results of the experiment showed that, when several constituents are located in this position, they are often in a downstep relation, but are rarely upstepped. In 37% of the cases, the pitch accents are only realized dynamically and there is no down- or upstepping. We interpret these results as evidence that postfocal constituents are phrased independently. The data examined speak against a model of postfocal intonation in which postfocal phrasing is eliminated and all accents are reduced to zero. Instead, the pitch accents are often present, although reduced. Moreover, the facts support the existence of prosodic phrasing of the postfocal constituents; the postfocal position implies an extremely compressed register, but no dephrasing or systematic complete deaccentuation of all pitch accents. We propose adopting a model of German intonation in which prosodic phrasing is determined by syntactic structure and cannot be changed by information structure. The role of information structure in prosody is limited to changes in the register relationship of the different parts of the sentence. Prefocally, there is no or only little register compression because of givenness. Postfocally, register compression is the rule. A model of intonation must take this asymmetry into account.

Suicide in Oxford University Students, 1976–1990

1995 ◽  
Vol 166 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith Hawton ◽  
Sue Simkin ◽  
Joan Fagg ◽  
Michael Hawkins
Keyword(s):  
University Students ◽  
Psychiatric Disorder ◽  
Academic Stress ◽  
University Student ◽  
Psychiatric Services ◽  
Mortality Statistics ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Student Counselling ◽  
College Staff ◽  
The Difference

BackgroundThe aim was to determine the extent, characteristics and timing of suicide in Oxford University students.MethodStudents who died from suicide or undetermined cause between October 1976 and September 1990 were identified through University records and individual colleges. Information about each student was sought from coroners, college staff, general practitioners and hospital case notes.ResultsThere were 21 suicides (16 men and 5 women) and one open verdict (female). The observed number of suicides (0) was greater than the number expected (E = 11.09) on the basis of mortality statistics for England and Wales (O/E = 1.89; 95% CI 1.17 to 2.90). When deaths due to undetermined cause were included, however, the difference between O and E (17.03) was much reduced (O/E = 1.29; 95% CI 0.81 to 1.95). There was no evidence of an association with the Finals examination but two-thirds of the students had been worried about academic achievement or their courses. Nearly half appeared to have had a psychiatric disorder (mostly depression).ConclusionsThe much publicised apparent excess of Oxford University student suicides may be partly artefactual. Measures for preventing student suicides include careful induction upon arrival at university, means of alleviating academic stress and worries, and readily available and closely associated student counselling and psychiatric services.

scholarly journals Monetary Transmission through Shadow Banks

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (6) ◽  
pp. 2379-2420 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kairong Xiao
Keyword(s):  
Monetary Policy ◽  
Banking Sector ◽  
Structural Model ◽  
Shadow Banking ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Shadow Banks ◽  
Bank Deposits ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Pass Through ◽  
The Impact

Abstract I find that shadow bank money creation significantly expands during monetary-tightening cycles. This “shadow banking channel” offsets reductions in commercial bank deposits and dampens the impact of monetary policy. Using a structural model of bank competition, I show that the difference in depositor clienteles quantitatively explains banks’ different responses to monetary policy. Facing a more yield-sensitive clientele, shadow banks are more likely to pass through rate hikes to depositors, thereby attracting more deposits when the Federal Reserve raises rates. My results suggest that monetary tightening could unintentionally increase financial fragility by driving deposits into the uninsured shadow banking sector. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.

Situationally independent prosodic phrasing

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shari R. Speer ◽  
Paul Warren ◽  
Amy J. Schafer
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Speech Production ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Task Demands ◽  
Syntactic Ambiguity ◽  
Prosodic Phrasing ◽  
Constituent Structure ◽  
Syntactic Form ◽  
American Midwest ◽  
The Impact

AbstractA series of speech production and categorization experiments demonstrates that naïve speakers and listeners reliably use correspondences between prosodic phrasing and syntactic constituent structure to resolve standing and temporary ambiguity. Materials obtained from a co-operative gameboard task show that prosodic phrasing effects (e.g., the location of the strongest break in an utterance) are independent of discourse factors that might be expected to influence the impact of syntactic ambiguity, including the availability of visual referents for the meanings of ambiguous utterances and the use of utterances as instructions versus confirmations of instructions. These effects hold across two dialects of English, spoken in the American Midwest, and New Zealand. Results from PP-attachment and verb transitivity ambiguities indicate clearly that the production of prosody-syntax correspondences is not conditional upon situational disambiguation of syntactic structure, but is rather more directly tied to grammatical constraints on the production of prosodic and syntactic form. Differences between our results and those reported elsewhere are best explained in terms of differences in task demands.

The change of Frisian infinitives

2017 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 17-29
Author(s):  
Myrthe Bergstra
Keyword(s):  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Flexible Structure ◽  
The Difference

Abstract This paper discusses the two types of infinitives in Frisian: infinitives ending in -E (e.g. rinne “walk”) and infinitives ending in -EN (e.g. rinnen “walk”). It shows that their distribution can be accounted for by their different underlying syntactic structure: the -E infinitive has a fully verbal structure whereas the -EN infinitive has a flexible structure which always involves a DP. Moreover, I argue that the fact that the difference between the two forms is disappearing can be explained both by Dutch influence and by the fact that the structure of the infinitives already showed much overlap.

scholarly journals Can prosody encode recursive embedding? Children's realizations of complex NPs in Japanese

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Manami HIRAYAMA ◽  
Laura COLANTONI ◽  
Ana Teresa PÉREZ-LEROUX
Keyword(s):  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Prosodic Phrasing ◽  
Elicited Imitation ◽  
Lexical Prosody

Recursive NPs are difficult to produce and late to emerge. We compare prosodic and syntactic abilities in Japanese-speaking five- and six-year-olds (n = 28) and adults (n = 10). It is reported that syntactic structure in Japanese is prosodically marked via downstep and metrical boost. Results of an elicited imitation task suggested that children had acquired the lexical prosody (contrast between accented and unaccented words), a pre-requisite for downstep realization. While downstep, the prosodic phrasing involved in the complex NPs in this study, was established, children showed interspeaker variation with the metrical boost, a feature that distinguishes recursively embedded NPs from non-recursive NPs. However, variability was also found in adults, indicating that, in contrast to previous results, prosodic encoding of syntax is generally unreliable in adult speech. Finally, the magnitude of metrical boost was not correlated to children's ability to produce recursive possessives, suggesting that prosody does not help bootstrap Japanese children's recursive phrases.

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