The present work aims at a formal description of the interface between prosody and pragmatics in the framework of Constraint-based Unified Grammar CUG. It focuses on two main aspects of this interface: (1) intonation patterns vs. speech acts and (2) stress vs. topicfocus articulation. First, four terminal contours are proposed: fall, mid, rise, and high rise. They are then mapped into the speec...

prominentpositive symptoms of schizophrenia and15 normal controls performedverbalprosodic andpure musical discriminationtasks, with changes inpitch and timingparameters.The patients’performancewas comparable to thatof controls onthe discrimination of terminalpitch changes, but significantly pooreronthemore difficult internalpitch discrimination.The latterdeficit was positivelycorrelatedwiththe ...

This paper examines word-level prosody in Fataluku, an underdocumented Papuan language of East Timor. Although information about Fataluku remains very limited, at least three alternative analyses of word-level prosody have been suggested: predictable accent, phonemic accent and phonemic tone. This study investigates the phonetic facts of the f0 contour in Fataluku, comparing the behavior of f0 ...

The absence of real-time and targeted feedback is often critical in spoken foreign language learning. Computer-assisted language assessment systems are playing an ever more important role in this domain. This work considers the idiosyncratic pronunciation patterns of Chinese English speakers and uses both acoustic and prosody features to capture pronunciation, word stress, and rhythm informatio...

This paper tries to discuss the interrelation between prosody and syntax by clarifying some syntactic constraints in Chinese prosodic segmentation and grouping. The main attention will be paid to search for (1) possible correlation between prosodic breaks and syntactic construction; (2) possible correlation between prosodic breaks and POS; and (3) the role of syntactic and lexical information i...

This paper establishes a framework under which various aspects of prosodic morphology, such as templatic morphology and infixation, can be handled under two-level theory using an implemented multi-tape two-level model. The paper provides a new computational analysis of root-and-pattern morphology based on prosody.

This study reports on the continuing investigation into the articulatory realization of function words in English. Using data from the Multichannel Articulatory (MOCHA) database, the consonant articulations in function and content words are examined as a function of position in an utterance. The preliminary results suggest that the word-class distinction is a vital factor in the interface betwe...

Schizophrenia is one of the most disabling and difficult to treat of all human medical/health conditions, ranking in the top ten causes of disability worldwide. It has been a puzzle in part due to difficulty in identifying its basic, fundamental components. Several studies have shown that some manifestations of schizophrenia (e.g., the negative symptoms that include blunting of speech prosody, ...