Discourse Intonation and Systemic Functional Phonology

Phonology of intonation

Intonation and Interpretation: Phonetics and Phonology

Intonational meaning is located in two components of language, the phonetic implementation and the intonational grammar. The phonetic implementation is widely used for the expression of universal meanings that derive from ‘biological codes’, meaning dimensions based on aspects of the production process of pitch variation. Three codes are identified, Ohala’s Frequency Code, the Effort Code and t...

Biased Questions, Intonation and Discourse

Semanticists have demonstrated repeatedly over the past twenty years that intonation often conveys information important for determining the content of a discourse. For example, intonation is important for marking focus in English, which in turn is important for interpreting sentences with focus sensitive adverbs like even and only (Beaver and Clark 2003). Intonation is also important in markin...

Intonation and the Intentional Structure of Discourse

It is increasingly recognized in Natural Language Processing that intonation makes a significant contribution to the communication of discourse structure. However, the correspondence between particular intonational features and specific aspects of discourse structure is only beginning to be understood. In this paper, we show how tune, phrasing, accent, and pitch range can combine to convey info...

Greek wh-questions and the phonology of intonation

The intonation of Greek wh-questions consists of a rise-fall followed by a low plateau and a final rise. With acoustic data, we show (1) that the exact contour shape depends on the length of the question, and (2) that the position of the first peak and the low plateau depends on the position of the stressed syllables, and shows predictable adjustments in alignment depending on the proximity of ...