Publicação
Variation in Tone and Gesture within Language
| Resumo: | The present research focuses on the relation between tone and gesture across varieties of the same language, European Portuguese (EP). Three questions are addressed: (i) whether EP varieties use different visual cues while producing different sentence types/pragmatic meanings, (ii) if there is a relation between intonational variation and variability (if any) of visual cues, and (iii) if each linguistic factor involved can predict the type of visual cues used. Two sentence types (statements/yes-no questions) and pragmatic meanings (broad/narrow focus) were examined in four varieties of EP. Results show that visual cues, like intonation, may vary across varieties and sentence types/pragmatic meanings. Furthermore, sentence type and pragmatic meaning are good predictors of how visual cues are time-aligned with intonation, in contrast with language variety. Consequently, we hypothesize that visual cues might play an important role in discriminating sentence types/pragmatic meanings, especially in the absence of tonal contrasts. |
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| Autores principais: | Cruz, Marisa |
| Outros Autores: | Swerts, Marc; Frota, Sónia |
| Assunto: | Visual prosody Intonation Language varieties Sentence types Pragmatic meaning |
| Ano: | 2015 |
| País: | Portugal |
| Tipo de documento: | capítulo de livro |
| Tipo de acesso: | acesso aberto |
| Instituição associada: | Universidade de Lisboa |
| Idioma: | inglês |
| Origem: | Repositório da Universidade de Lisboa |
| Resumo: | The present research focuses on the relation between tone and gesture across varieties of the same language, European Portuguese (EP). Three questions are addressed: (i) whether EP varieties use different visual cues while producing different sentence types/pragmatic meanings, (ii) if there is a relation between intonational variation and variability (if any) of visual cues, and (iii) if each linguistic factor involved can predict the type of visual cues used. Two sentence types (statements/yes-no questions) and pragmatic meanings (broad/narrow focus) were examined in four varieties of EP. Results show that visual cues, like intonation, may vary across varieties and sentence types/pragmatic meanings. Furthermore, sentence type and pragmatic meaning are good predictors of how visual cues are time-aligned with intonation, in contrast with language variety. Consequently, we hypothesize that visual cues might play an important role in discriminating sentence types/pragmatic meanings, especially in the absence of tonal contrasts. |
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