This paper is an outline of the most important linguistic functions of the prosodic units. These units are defined as phonetic features that have at least the length of a syllable, such as tones, intonation, tessitura, mora, pause, stress, rhythm, arsis/tesis, loudness, register and voice quality.
The linguistic functions are presented in relation to phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics and discourse analysis.
Prosody causes specific phonological processes, it determines syntactic structures, it specifies semantic meanings and it contributes to the organization of sentences in the discourse, among other linguistic functions.
Prosodic units do not occur in language in a random manner but they share specific language conventions with well defined framework.
Cite as: Cagliari, L.C. (1991) Linguistic functions of prosody. Proc. ESCA Workshop on Phonetics and Phonology of Speaking Styles, paper 015
@inproceedings{cagliari91_ppst,
author={Luiz Carlos Cagliari},
title={{Linguistic functions of prosody}},
year=1991,
booktitle={Proc. ESCA Workshop on Phonetics and Phonology of Speaking Styles},
pages={paper 015}
}