Surface and Structure: Transcribing Intonation within and across Languages

Quantitative Tone and Intonation Modeling across Languages

Although it has been shown for many languages that the Fujisaki model is in principle capable of decomposing F0 contours in these languages, problems remain as to the automatic extraction as well as the interpretation of parameters extracted with respect to their phonological relevance. The claim is made in the current article that the Fujisaki model parametrization used must be rooted in the l...

Metacognitive (Rending) Strategies Across Languages and Techniques

Surface Structure, Intonation, and Focus

The paper briefly reviews a theory of intonational prosody and its relation syntax, and to certain oppositions of discourse meaning that have variously been called "topic and comment", "theme and rheme", "given and new", or "presupposition and focus." The theory, which is based on Combinatory Categorial Grammar, is presented in full elsewhere. The present paper examines its implications for the...

Verb classes within and across languages

Any attempt to characterize valency patterns within and across languages confronts the phenomenon of verb or valency classes: sets of semantically-related verbs sharing a range of linguistic properties, such as the possible realizations of their arguments and the particular interpretation associated with each possible argument realization. The Leipzig Valency Classes Project provides an excelle...

Prosodic Focus Within and Across Languages

The fact that “purely” prosodic marking of focus may be weaker in some languages than in others, and that it varies in certain circumstances even within a single language, has not been commonly recognized. Therefore, this dissertation investigated whether and how purely prosodic marking of focus varies within and across languages. We conducted production and perception experiments using a parad...