finin@prc.unisys.com (Tim Finin) (12/12/89)
AI SEMINAR
UNISYS PAOLI RESEARCH CENTER
Prosody: Forms and Functions
or
How English Speakers Live Every Day with Nuclear Stress
Shirley Steele
Unisys Paoli Research Center
Prosody is the melody and rhythm of speech; that is, the patterns of
pitch, timing, and loudness that occur over an utterance. It is
language-specific, and native speakers use the prosody of their language
appropriately. As a field of study, however, prosody is fairly new.
Prosodic phenomena are notoriously difficult to recognize subjectively,
and researchers have only recently had the tools with which to make
objective measurements. Therefore, the research currently being
conducted in English prosodics is the basic work of identifying patterns,
discovering their function, and finding an adequate descriptive framework
for prosodic phenomena. By contrast, these concepts were established for
the segmental sounds of English ([p], [t], [k], etc.) by British
phoneticians as early as the middle of the nineteenth century. This talk
will be a tutorial overview of the current state of our knowledge about
what prosody is, how speakers use it, and why speech researchers are
interested in it.
(For more about Nuclear Stress, you have to come to the talk.)
2:00 pm Tuesday, December 19, 1989
BIC Conference Room
Unisys Paoli Research Center
Route 252 and Central Ave.
Paoli PA 19311
-- non-Unisys visitors who are interested in attending should --
-- send email to finin@prc.unisys.com or call 215-648-7446 --
--
Tim Finin finin@prc.unisys.com (internet)
Unisys Paoli Research Center 215-648-7446 (office) 215-648-7412 (fax)
PO Box 517, Paoli, PA 19301 215-386-1749 (home)