Prosodic marking of appositive relative clause types in spoken discourse: pragmatic and phonetic
analyses of a British English corpus
Cyril Auran & Rudy Loock
Laboratoire Savoirs, Textes, Langage, Université Lille 3 - CNRS UMR 8163
cyril.auran@univ-lille3.fr / rudy.loock@univ-lille3.fr
http://stl.recherche.univ-lille3.fr/projets/discours_prosodie/presentation
1. ARCs and their functions in discourse
0. Global project and methodology
• Starting point: Loock’s (2003, 2005, 2007) taxonomy of ARCs and their discourse functions:
• Aim: relate discourse functions/structure and prosody
• Study of Appositive Relative Clauses in English (ARCs, see 1)
CONTINUATIVE ARC (3)
It makes narrative time move forward. The events are
shown in a sequence and a causal link may exist.
(1) The students, who like linguistics, also like translation.
• 2-step methodology:
• Discourse annotation: discourse function, information status of ARC and MC, syntactic characteristics
• Prosodic annotation: semi-automatic analysis of the corresponding recordings using original scripts with
Praat (cf. Boersma & Weenink 2006)
RELEVANCE ARC (2)
SUBJECTIVITY ARC (4)
The aim is to optimize the relevance of the antecedent
and/or the subject-predicate relation within the MC.
The ARC conveys information that is explicitly subjective
and allows for a rupture between two levels:
ARC
• Corpora:
• Aix-MARSEC (cf. Auran, Bouzon & Hirst 2004)
• IViE (cf. Grabe & Post 2002)
• ICE-GB (cf. Greenbaum 1996)
The referential level (MC)
The interpretative level (ARC)
The antecedent, in spite of its referential stability, is not
sufficiently determined for at least some of the
addressees to be used alone in discourse.
EXPLOITATION OF THE INTERCLAUSAL LINK
The inter-clausal link between the MC and
the ARC is exploited to bring a new
perspective on the contents of the MC.
2. Prosodic analysis
• Prosody as a macro-system:
(2) he was convinced # the battle # for the hearts # and minds of the people # was being won # especially #
among the Ovambo # who form the majority # of SWAPO's support
• tonal aspects (tone and intonation, in relation with speech melody)
• temporal aspects (unit durations and speech rate)
(3) the first book he took from the library was Darwin's # Origin of Species # which inspired him with the dream of
becoming a geologist
• intensity (one of the major correlates of loudness)
• voice quality (in relation with spectral characteristics of the speech signal)
• Representation levels (Hirst et al. 2000):
(4) Israelis # have sympathy and liking for Americans # which is just as well # since the country is swarming # with
transatlantic visitors
• 2 prosodic dimensions:
• acoustic level: physical characteristics of the
speech signal (F0, raw durations, dB)
Linear
• phonetic level: retains only linguistically
significant elements (low-level physical
constraints factored out: MoMel modelling, ztransformed durations)
Orthogonal
• Differences in the hierarchisation of the informational contents (ARC vs. MC):
• Relevance/subjectivity: MC = foreground vs. ARC = background
• Continuative: informational contents on the same level (narrative dynamism traditionally restricted to independent clauses;
cf. Depraetere 1996)
=> Are continuatives independent clauses?
(cf. Ross 1967, Emonds 1979, McCawley 1982, Fabb 1990 among others, who express this idea for ARCs as a whole.)
• phonological levels (surface and deep): discrete
and abstract coding
Level
250
=> Prosodic investigation: are ARCs realized with the intonation contour of independent clauses or parentheticals?
Span
4. Results
All ARC types
Domains
2.17188
2.17
Time (s)
Onset
Results
- Positive onset value (1.6460 ST) for ARCs (no
depression)
Domains
Dimensions
- Positive delta for ARC onsets (1.944 ST)
[onsets: R=1.555 ST / S=2.227 ST
The pitch level of ARCs is lower than that of:
3. Data extraction and analysis
Level
-
preceding IUs (KS : D=0.3667 / p=0.000557 *)
-
following IUs (KS : D=0.2833 / p=0.01579 *)
- Higher deltas for Subjectivity ARCs (tendency)
Onset
[previous delta = 1.944 ST / next delta = 3.734 ST]
Tonal
domain
Results
- Higher onset values for Subjectivity ARCs
(tendency)
Tonal
domain
deltas: R=1.754 ST / S=4.332 ST]
No significant difference (D=0.1221 / p=0.9182)
Level
[R=-0.4855 ST / S=-0.9216 ST]
[0.2187 / -0.6087 / 0.05998 ST]
Span
preceding IUs (KS : D=0.1 / p=0.925)
-
following IUs (KS : D=0.1167 / p=0.8088)
- Due to differences in recording qualities, direct
comparisons of absolute values have been avoided;
[11.22 / 11.4 / 10.98 ST]
Intensity
domain
lower than that of preceding IUs (KS :
D=0.2667 / p=0.02763 *)
Level
Intensity
domain
No significant difference (D=0.2064 / p=0.879)
Span
not significantly different from that of following
IUs (KS : D=0.2333 / p=0.07608)
-
No differences in intensity span with:
Span
- Previous work (Auran & Loock 2006) AixMARSEC corpus: lower values for Subjectivity
ARCs.
Level
The intensity level of ARCs is
• Prosodic parameters (48):
-
preceding IUs (KS : D=0.2 / p=0.1821)
-
following IUs (KS : D=0.1833 / p=0.2671)
Temporal
domain
[R=8.77 dB / S=9.171 dB]
Slower speech rate for Subjectivity ARCs (D=0.5714
/ p=0.03975 *)
Speech rate
[Normalised durations: R=-0.1725 / S=0.04386]
* = significant
[8.49 / 8.878 / 8.744 dB]
No differences in speech rate with:
Speech rate
-
preceding IUs (KS : D=0.2069 / p=0.1669)
-
following IUs (KS : D=0.2069 / p=0.1669)
Intensity range per ARC type (ST)
12
8
0.0
[-0.02733 / -0.1411 / -0.09402]
Speech rate per ARC type
10
Temporal
domain
Intensity level per ARC type (ST)
2
55
-0.4
4
60
6
* = significant
C
Onset deltas per ARC type (ST)
R
R/S
S
C
C?
R
Register level per ARC type (ST)
R/S
S
C
C?
R
R/S
S
Register span per ARC type (ST)
25
Onset values per ARC type (ST)
C?
-4
0
10
-2
0
-2
• Register and intensity levels: lower than those of surrounding units  typical of prosodic parentheticals
-6
-5
-6
• All ARCS  both typical and atypical characteristics:
C
C?
R
R/S
S
5
-4
5. Discussion
15
5
2
0
20
4
10
2
6
• Tonal domain (32): ARC mean F0 (Htz + semitones or ST), ARC minimum F0 (Htz + ST), ARC maximum
F0 (Htz + ST), ARC register span (Htz + ST), ARC onset (Htz + ST), ARC offset (Htz + ST), previous IU
mean F0 (Htz + ST), previous IU minimum F0 (Htz + ST), previous IU maximum F0 (Htz + ST), previous IU
register span (Htz + ST), previous IU offset (Htz + ST), next IU mean F0 (Htz + ST), next IU minimum F0
(Htz + ST), next IU maximum F0 (Htz + ST), next IU register span (Htz + ST), next IU onset (Htz + ST),
difference between previous IU offset and ARC onset (ST), difference between ARC offset and next IU onset
(ST)
• Temporal domain (10): ARC duration (raw and normalised), previous IU duration (raw and normalised),
next IU duration (raw and normalised), difference between previous IU normalised duration and ARC
normalised duration, difference between ARC normalised duration and next IU normalised duration, silence
duration before ARC, silence duration after ARC
• Intensity domain (6): mean of ARC global intensity, standard deviation of ARC global intensity, mean of
previous IU global intensity, standard deviation of previous IU global intensity, mean of next IU global
intensity, standard deviation of next IU global intensity
-
[R=11.640 ST / S=10.91 ST]
75
• ARC type
• Position (initial/medial/final)
• Information status of antecedent
• Information status of ARC
• Phrastic status of antecedent
37
8
1
4
2
2
Span
70
• Discourse parameters (5):
No differences in pitch span with:
65
• Number of items per ARC type:
• Relevance
• Subjectivity
• Continuative
• Relevance/Subjectivity
• Ambiguous continuative
• Unidentified
No significant difference (D=0.1919 / p=0.9994)
0.2
60
0
Dimensions
-0.2
Original F0
Resynthesized F0 (MOMEL)
Relevance vs. Subjectivity
C
C?
R
R/S
S
C
C?
R
R/S
S
C
C?
R
R/S
S
• Register and intensity spans + speech rate  classical IUs realizing independent clauses
• to be linked with the possibility for ARCs to:
• have the syntactic behaviour and the semantic interpretation of independent clauses
• convey independent speech acts (cf. Emonds 1979, McCawley 1982 among others)
• Relevance vs. Subjectivity ARCs:
6. Conclusion
• Apparent correlation between discourse functions and prosody
• Discourse discontinuity marking through high onset values for both types
• Some prosodic characteristics atypical of appositions in general
• Subjectivity ARCs display even stronger discontinuity ↔ more important rupture with the discourse
topic (cf. shift between the referential and interpretative levels; see frame 1)
• Differences among ARC types: Subjectivity ARCs display prosodic rupture cues, on a par with the
peripheral information which they convey
More peripheral information conveyed by subjectivity ARCs (non-topical comment or judgement)
• Lower intensity level values for Subjectivity ARC: strategy used by the speaker to induce the perception
of intermediate levels between otherwise discrete categories such as continuity/discontinuity,
subjectivity/objectivity, etc. (conflicting prosodic characteristics for subjective episodes; cf. Di Cristo et al.
2004)
• Speech rate differences need further investigation (the great majority of subjectivity ARCs qualifies
sentential antecedents (cf. Loock 2007): parameters difficult to separate)
• Further investigation:
• The respective roles of the syntactic status of the antecedent (nominal vs. sentential) and of the ARC
type, particularly with relation to speech rate, need to be closely analysed.
• Prosodic characteristics of Continuative ARCs: typical of subordinate or main clauses?
Problem: availability of acoustically exploitable unscripted/spontaneous data
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IPrA 10 – Göteborg – July 2007