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SUMMARY:Categories and gradience in intonation - Brechtje Post\, RCEAL
DTSTART:20090224T160000Z
DTEND:20090224T173000Z
UID:TALK15707@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Susan Rolfe
DESCRIPTION:Intonation\, or the melody of speech\, plays a central role in
  human communication\, since it can provide immediate cues to the start of
  a new word or phrase in the speech stream\, and to the meaning of utteran
 ces. As a consequence\, when the intonation is wrong\, communication often
  breaks down. However\, intonation is notoriously difficult to analyse bec
 ause of its continuous nature\, its multiple functions\, and its interacti
 on with other parts of the grammar. As a consequence\, it remains unclear 
 how exactly it is realised\, what units are involved\, how it contributes 
 to speech comprehension\, and how it is processed in the brain.  \n\n\nThe
  Autosegmental-Metrical (AM) framework for intonational analysis (Pierrehu
 mbert 1980\, Gussenhoven 1984\, 2004\, Ladd 1996\, Jun 2005) offers discre
 te\, economical and insightful formalisations of intonation systems\, whic
 h promise to provide the key to understanding cross-linguistic\, -dialecta
 l and -stylistic intonational variation\, which in turn will open up new a
 venues for researching cognitive and neural aspects of intonation processi
 ng. Although AM is now firmly established as the predominant theoretical f
 ramework in the field\, a major issue for the theory is that there is litt
 le evidence to support the central tenet that underpins it: the assumption
  that intonation contours can be analysed in terms of a limited number of 
 discrete phonological categories which can be realised in gradiently varyi
 ng ways at a phonetic level. The problem is that functional categories and
  gradient variation are closely intertwined in intonation\, since both can
  be used to signal linguistic as well as paralinguistic variation in meani
 ng (e.g. Crystal 1969\, Bolinger 1970). \n\n\nIn this talk\, I will presen
 t the ESRC-funded project Categories and gradience in intonation: Evidence
  from linguistics and neurobiology (RES-061-25-0347\; January 2009 – Oct
 ober 2011\; collaborators Francis Nolan\, Linguistics & Emmanuel Stamataki
 s\, Anaesthesia\; RA Toby Hudson). Its two main objectives are (1) to use 
 a combination of empirical paradigms to test AM’s central tenet\, and (2
 ) to pin down the neural architecture that supports the processing of the 
 intonational information at issue. First\, I will illustrate how intonatio
 nal forms can be usefully analysed in terms of categories\, but also that 
 categorisation is problematic. Then I will discuss various techniques whic
 h have been successfully applied to investigate phonological category memb
 ership in related areas. Finally\, I will outline a series of speech produ
 ction and perception experiments\, as well as two fMRI experiments\, which
  will identify (1) the perceptual effects of certain acoustic changes in i
 ntonation patterns\, and (2) the brain systems that are involved in proces
 sing lower-level sound-based information\, and higher-level\, more abstrac
 t aspects of intonation. Taken together\, they will not only test a theory
  on which virtually all current research in intonation hinges\, but also p
 rovide the first neurobiological evidence of a refined\, linguistically in
 formed model of the neural underpinnings of intonation\, offering a templa
 te for future studies in this area.\n
LOCATION:GR-06/07\, English Faculty Building
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