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Phonetics and Phonology of Speaking Styles: Reduction and Elaboration in Speech CommunicationBarcelona, Catalonia, Spain |
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Phonetics and Phonology of Speaking Styles: Reduction and Elaboration in Speech CommunicationBarcelona, Catalonia, Spain |
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In a preceding article (Bhatt and Leon, 1991) temporal variables of three types of radio discourse (Newscasts, Concert Introductions and North American Football commentaries) were studied. Newscasts were found to have a relatively fast articulatory rate, with an irregular distribution of syllable quantity. Concert Introductions were much more regular in speed and distribution, whereas Football commentaries were found to contain unpredictable variations. The aim of this paper is to analyze melodic markers in the same corpus.
A number of researchers have remarked upon the highly conventional nature of accentual and intonational patterns in the speech of radio and television announcers (see, for example, D. Bolinger, 1989; D. Crystal and D. Davy, 1969; I. Fonagy and P. Leon, Eds., 1979; V. Lucci 1983). Our purpose here is to discover the extent to which these patterns can in themselves be recognized and distinguished without the presence of referential information. If these patterns are recognizable on their own this would give support to the hypothesis that prosodic markers have their own autonomous structure (especially on the macro-structural level) independent of lexical, semantic or syntactic cues.
Bibliographic reference. Bhatt, Parth / Léon, Pierre (1991): "Melodic patterns in three types of radio discourse", In PPoSpSt-1991, paper 011.