Phonetica was published by Karger Publishers up to and including 2020. If you or your institution subscribed to Phonetica during that period, you might still have access to the full text of this article on the Karger platform if you cannot access it here.
Abstract
This study examines prosody in read productions of two published narratives by 15 Russian speakers. Two distinct sources of variation in acoustic-prosodic expression are considered: structural and referent-based. Structural effects refer to the particular linearization of words in a sentence or phrase. Referent-based effects relate to the semantic and pragmatic characteristics of the discourse referent of a word, and to grammatical roles that are partially dependent on referent characteristics. Here, we examine referent animacy and the related grammatical function of subjecthood, and the relative accessibility or information status of a word. We document patterns of prosodic augmentation and prosodic reduction due to structural and referent-based factors, as evident from change in values of acoustic-prosodic measures mean intensity, duration and f0 range. Prosodic augmentation due to structural effects is observed for words positioned ex-situ, independent of their semantic, grammatical or pragmatic features. Prosodic augmentation due to referent-based effects is observed for words that are grammatical subjects with animate referents. Prosodic expression is further affected by referent information status. Discourse-given and discourse-new information show greater prosodic augmentation than inferable information. A closer look at individual speakers' production styles reveals that structural and referent-based variations occur in combination and interact.
verified
References
1 Afifi A, Clark V, May S (2004): Computer-Aided Multivariate Analysis, ed 4. Boca Raton, Chapman & Hall/CRC.Search in Google Scholar
2 Antão C, Arantes P, Cunha Lima ML (2013): Interrelation between subjecthood, referential status and prosody. Presentation at DGfS 2013 workshop ‘Prosody and Information Status in Typological Perspective'. http://www.sfb632.uni-potsdam.de/dgfs-2013/AGs/slides/ag1_antao_etal.pdf (accessed from December 21, 2014).Search in Google Scholar
3 Arnold JE, Losongco A, Wasow T, Ginstrom R (2000): Heaviness vs. newness: the effects of structural complexity and discourse status on constituent ordering. Language 76:28-55.10.1353/lan.2000.0045Search in Google Scholar
4 Arvaniti A, Adamou E (2011): Focus expression in Romani. Proceedings of the 28th West Coast conference on Formal Linguistics. Somerville, Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Search in Google Scholar
5 Aylett M, Turk A (2004): The smooth signal redundancy hypothesis: a functional explanation for relationships between redundancy, prosodic prominence, and duration in spontaneous speech. Lang Speech 47(pt 1):31-56.10.1177/00238309040470010201Search in Google Scholar
6 Baltazani M (2003): Pragmatics, intonation, and word order in Greek. Proceedings of Interfaces Prosodiques IP, pp 14-18.Search in Google Scholar
7 Baltazani M, Jun S-A (1999): Focus and topic intonation in Greek. Proceedings of the XIVth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, vol 2, pp 1305-1308.Search in Google Scholar
8 Baumann S, Riester A (2012): Referential and lexical givenness: semantic, prosodic and cognitive aspects; in Elordieta G, Prieto P (eds): Prosody and Meaning. Berlin, New York, Mouton De Gruyter.10.1515/9783110261790.119Search in Google Scholar
9 Baumann S, Riester A (2013): Coreference, lexical givenness and prosody in German. Lingua 136:16-37.10.1016/j.lingua.2013.07.012Search in Google Scholar
10 Bailyn JF (2004): Generalized inversion. Nat Lang Linguist Theory 22:1-50.10.1023/B:NALA.0000005556.40898.a5Search in Google Scholar
11 Birner BJ (1994): Information status and word order: an analysis of English inversion. Language 70:233-259.10.2307/415828Search in Google Scholar
12 Bivon R (1971): Element Order. Studies in the Modern Russian Language, 7. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar
13 Bock JK, Warren RK (1985): Conceptual accessibility and syntactic structure in sentence formulation. Cognition 21:47-67.10.1016/0010-0277(85)90023-XSearch in Google Scholar
14 Boersma P, Weenink D (2016): Praat: doing phonetics by computer. Version 6.0.21.Search in Google Scholar
15 Bornkessel-Schlesewsky I, Schlesewsky M (2009): The role of prominence information in the real-time comprehension of transitive constructions: a cross-linguistic approach. Lang Linguist Compass 3:19-58.10.1111/j.1749-818X.2008.00099.xSearch in Google Scholar
16 Botinis A, Themistocleous C, Kostopoulos Y, Nikolaenkova·(2005): Syntactic and tonal correlates of focus in Greek and Russian. Proceedings Fonetik 2005, the XVIIIth Swedish Phonetics Conference. Goteborg, Sweden.Search in Google Scholar
17 Branigan HP, Feleki E (1999): Conceptual accessibility and serial order in Greek language production. Proceedings of the 21st Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Vancouver.Search in Google Scholar
18 Branigan HP, Pickering MJ, Tanaka M (2008): Contributions of animacy to grammatical function assignment and word order during production. Lingua 118:172-189.10.1016/j.lingua.2007.02.003Search in Google Scholar
19 Breen M, Fedorenko E, Wagner M, Gibson E (2010): Acoustic correlates of information structure. Lang Cogn Process 25:1044-1098.10.1080/01690965.2010.504378Search in Google Scholar
20 Bresnan J, Dingare S, Manning CD (2001): Soft constraints mirror hard constraints: Voice and person in English and Lummi. Proceedings of the LFG '01 Conference. CSLI Publications.Search in Google Scholar
21 Brun D (2001): Information structure and the status of NP in Russian. Theor Linguist 27:109-135.10.1515/thli.2001.27.2-3.109Search in Google Scholar
22 Bush LK, Hess U, Wolford G (1993): Transformations for within-subject designs: a Monte Carlo investigation. Psychol Bull 113:566-579.10.1037/0033-2909.113.3.566Search in Google Scholar
23 Calhoun S (2015): The interaction of prosody and syntax in Samoan focus marking. Lingua 165:205-229.10.1016/j.lingua.2014.11.007Search in Google Scholar
24 Chafe WL (1976): Givenness, contrastiveness, definiteness, subjects, topics, and point of view; in Li C (ed): Subject and Topic. New York, Academic Press.Search in Google Scholar
25 Chafe WL (1994): Discourse, Consciousness and Time. Chicago/London, The University of Chicago Press.Search in Google Scholar
26 Cho T (2016): Prosodic boundary strengthening in the phonetics-prosody interface. Lang Linguist Compass 10:120-141.10.1111/lnc3.12178Search in Google Scholar
27 Clark E, Clark H (1978): Universals, relativity, and language processing; in Greenberg JH (ed): Universals of Human Language. Stanford, Stanford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
28 Clifton C, Frazier L (2004): Should given information come before new? Yes and no. Mem Cogn 32:886-895.10.3758/BF03196867Search in Google Scholar
29 Cole J, Mo Y, Hasegawa-Johnson M (2010): Signal-based and expectation-based factors in the perception of prosodic prominence. Lab Phonol 1:425-452.10.1515/labphon.2010.022Search in Google Scholar
30 Comrie B (1989): Linguistic Universals in Language Typology, ed 2. Oxford, Blackwell.Search in Google Scholar
31 Cruttenden A (2006): The deaccenting of given information: a cognitive universal; in Bernini G, Schwartz M (eds): Pragmatic Organization of Discourse in the Languages of Europe. Berlin, Mouton de Gruyter, pp 311-356.Search in Google Scholar
32 de Ruiter LE (2015): Information status marking in spontaneous vs. read speech in story-telling tasks - evidence from intonation analysis using GToBI. J Phon 48:29-44.10.1016/j.wocn.2014.10.008Search in Google Scholar
33 de Swart P (2007): Cross-Linguistic Variation in Object Marking. LOT, Utrecht, The Netherlands.Search in Google Scholar
34 Féry C, Krifka M (2008): Information structure: notional distinctions, ways of expression; in van Sterkenburg P (ed): Unity and Diversity of Languages. Amsterdam, John Benjamins.10.1075/z.141.13kriSearch in Google Scholar
35 Genzel S, Kügler F (2010): The prosodic expression of contrast in Hindi. Proceedings of Speech Prosody, Chicago, IL, USA.Search in Google Scholar
36 Genzel S, Ishihara S, Surányi B (2015): The prosodic expression of focus, contrast and givenness: a production study of Hungarian. Lingua 165:183-204.10.1016/j.lingua.2014.07.010Search in Google Scholar
37 Halliday M (1967): Intonation and grammar in British English. The Hague: Mouton.10.1515/9783111357447Search in Google Scholar
38 Haviland S, Clark H (1974): What's new? Acquiring new information as a process in comprehension. J Verbal Learning Verbal Behav 13:512-521.10.1016/S0022-5371(74)80003-4Search in Google Scholar
39 Hinterhölzl R (2009): Information structure and unmarked word order in (Older) Germanic; in Zimmermann M, Féry C (eds): Information Structure: Theoretical, Typological, and Experimental Perspectives. Oxford, Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199570959.003.0012Search in Google Scholar
40 Hoeks JC, Stowe LA, Doedens G (2004): Seeing words in context: the interaction of lexical and sentence level information during reading. Brain Res Cogn Brain Res 19:59-73.10.1016/j.cogbrainres.2003.10.022Search in Google Scholar
41 Hróarsdóttir T (2009): Information structure and OV order; in Zimmermann M, Féry C (eds): Information Structure: Theoretical, Typological, and Experimental Perspectives. Oxford, Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199570959.003.0011Search in Google Scholar
42 Ionin T, Luchkina T (Under revision): Focus on Russian Scope: An Experimental Investigation of the Relationship between Quantifier Scope, Prosody, and Information Structure. Manuscript under review.Search in Google Scholar
43 Işsever S (2003): Information structure in Turkish: the word order-prosody interface. Lingua 113:1025-1053.10.1016/S0024-3841(03)00012-3Search in Google Scholar
44 Jasinskaja K (2013): Information Structure in Slavic; in Féry C, Ishihara S (eds): Handbook of Information Structure. Oxford, Oxford University Press.10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199642670.013.25Search in Google Scholar
45 Kaland CCL, Krahmer EJ, Swerts MGJ (2011): Contrastive intonation: speaker- or listener-driven; in Lee W-S, Zee E (eds): Proceedings of the 17th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, pp 1006-1009.Search in Google Scholar
46 Kallestinova E (2007): Aspects of word order in Russian. Doctoral dissertation, Iowa University.Search in Google Scholar
47 King T (1995): Configuring Topic and Focus in Russian. Stanford, CSLI Publications: Center for the Study of Language and Information.Search in Google Scholar
48 Ladd RD (2008): Intonational Phonology. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511808814Search in Google Scholar
49 Lambrecht K (1994): Information Structure and Sentence Form. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511620607Search in Google Scholar
50 Lobanova A (2011): The role of prominence scales for the disambiguation of grammatical functions in Russian. Russian Linguist 35:125-142.10.1007/s11185-010-9066-3Search in Google Scholar
51 Luchkina T, Cole J (2014): Structural and prosodic correlates of prominence in free word order language discourse. Proceedings of the 2014 Meeting of the Speech Prosody Conference (SP 7), Dublin, Ireland.10.21437/SpeechProsody.2014-214Search in Google Scholar
52 Luchkina T, Puri V, Jyothi P, Cole J (2015): Prosodic and structural correlates of perceived prominence in Russian and Hindi. Proceedings of International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Glasgow, Scotland.Search in Google Scholar
53 Mak WM, Vonk W, Schriefers H (2002): The influence of animacy on relative clause processing. J Mem Lang 47:50-68.10.1006/jmla.2001.2837Search in Google Scholar
54 McDonald JL, Bock K, Kelly MH (1993): Word and world order: semantic, phonological, and metrical determinants of serial position. Cogn Psychol 25:188-230.10.1006/cogp.1993.1005Search in Google Scholar
55 Mo Y, Cole J, Lee E (2008): Native listeners' prominence and boundary perception. Proceedings of Speech Prosody, Campinas, Brazil.Search in Google Scholar
56 Morgan JL, Meier RP, Newport EL (1987): Structural packaging in the input to language learning: contributions of prosodic and morphological marking of phrases to the acquisition of language. Cogn Psychol 19:498-550.10.1016/0010-0285(87)90017-XSearch in Google Scholar
57 Neeleman A, Titov E (2009): Focus, contrast, and stress in Russian. Linguistic Inquiry 40:514-524.10.1162/ling.2009.40.3.514Search in Google Scholar
58 Nakayama M (1995): Scrambling and probe recognition; in Mazuka R, Nagai N (eds): Japanese Sentence Processing. Hillsdale, Lawrence Erlbaum Associate, Hillsdale, NJ, USA, pp 257-273.Search in Google Scholar
59 Patil U, Kentner G, Gollrad A, Kügler F, Féry C, Vasishth S (2008): Focus, word order, and intonation in Hindi. J South Asian Linguist 1:53-70.Search in Google Scholar
60 Pierrehumbert J, Hirschberg J (1990): The meaning of intonational contours in the interpretation of discourse; in Cohen P, Morgan J, Pollack M (eds): Intentions in Communication. Cambridge, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, pp 271-311.Search in Google Scholar
61 Prat-Sala M (1997): The production of different word orders: a psycholinguistic and developmental approach. Ph.D. Dissertation. Edinburgh, University of Edinburgh.Search in Google Scholar
62 Prat-Sala M, Branigan HP (2000): Discourse constraints on syntactic processing in language production: a crosslinguistic study in English and Spanish. J Mem Lang 42:168-182.10.1006/jmla.1999.2668Search in Google Scholar
63 Prince E (1981): Toward a taxonomy of given/new information; in Cole P (ed): Radical Pragmatics. New York, Academic Press, New York, NY, USA, pp 223-254.Search in Google Scholar
64 Sekerina I (2003): Scrambling processing: dependencies, complexity, and constraints; in Karimi S (ed): Word Order and Scrambling. Oxford, Blackwell, Malden, MA, USA, pp 301-324.Search in Google Scholar
65 Sirotinina OB (1965/2003): Porjadok slov v russkom jazyke (‘Word order in Russian') (ed 2). Moscow, Editorial URSS.Search in Google Scholar
66 Sityaev D (2000): The relationship between accentuation and information status of discourse referents: a corpusbased study. UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 12:285-304.Search in Google Scholar
67 Slioussar N (2010): Russian data call for relational information structure notions; in Zybatow G, et al (eds): Formal Studies in Slavic Linguistics. Proceedings of Formal Description of Slavic Languages. Frankfurt am Main, Peter Lang, vol 7, pp 329-344.Search in Google Scholar
68 Slioussar N (2011): Grammar and Information Structure: A Novel View Based on Russian Data. Utrecht institute of Linguistics OTS and St. Petersburg State University.Search in Google Scholar
69 Slioussar N (2011a): Processing of a free word order language: the role of syntax and context. J Psycholinguist Res 40:291-306.10.1007/s10936-011-9171-5Search in Google Scholar
70 Svetozavora N (1998): Russian intonation; in Hirst D, Di Cristo A (eds): Intonation Systems: A Survey of Twenty Languages. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar
71 Swerts M, Strangert E, Heldner M (1996): F0 declination in spontaneous and read-aloud speech. Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (ICSLP). Philadelphia, PA, USA, pp 1501-1504.10.21437/ICSLP.1996-387Search in Google Scholar
72 Traxler M, Williams RS, Blozis SA, Morris RK (2005): Working memory, animacy, and verb class in the processing of relative clauses. J Mem Lang 53:204-224.10.1016/j.jml.2005.02.010Search in Google Scholar
73 Traxler MJ, Morris RK, Seely RE (2002): Processing subject and object relative clauses: evidence from eye movements. J Mem Lang 47:69-90.10.1006/jmla.2001.2836Search in Google Scholar
74 Vainio M, Järvikivi J (2006): Tonal features, intensity, and word order in the perception of prominence. J Phon 34:319-342.10.1016/j.wocn.2005.06.004Search in Google Scholar
75 van Nice KY, Dietrich R (2003): Task sensitivity of animacy effects: evidence from German picture descriptions. Linguistics 41:825-849.10.1515/ling.2003.027Search in Google Scholar
76 Verhoeven E (2009): Subjects, agents, experiencers, and animates in competition: modern Greek argument order. Linguistische Berichte 219:355-376.Search in Google Scholar
77 Verhoeven E (2014): Thematic prominence and animacy asymmetries. Evidence from a cross-linguistic production study. Lingua 143:129-161.10.1016/j.lingua.2014.02.002Search in Google Scholar
78 Watson D, Arnold JA, Tanenhaus MK (2008): Tic Tac TOE: effects of predictability and importance on acoustic prominence in language production. Cognition 106:1548-1557.10.1016/j.cognition.2007.06.009Search in Google Scholar
79 Watson DG (2010): The many roads to prominence: understanding emphasis in conversation; in Ross B (ed): The Psychology of Learning and Motivation. Burlington, Academic Press, pp 163-183.Search in Google Scholar
80 Xu Y (1999): Effects of tone on the formation and alignment of f0 contours. J Phon 27:22-106.10.1006/jpho.1999.0086Search in Google Scholar
81 Xu Y, Xu CX (2005): Phonetic realization of focus in English declarative intonation. J Phonetics 33:159-197.10.1016/j.wocn.2004.11.001Search in Google Scholar
82 Yamashita H (1997): The effects of word-order and case-marking information on the processing of Japanese. J Psycholinguist Res 26:163-188.10.1023/A:1025009615473Search in Google Scholar
83 Yokoyama·(1986): Discourse and word order. Amsterdam, John Benjamins.10.1075/pbcs.6Search in Google Scholar
© 2017 S. Karger AG, Basel
