Universität Bielefeld - Sonderforschungsbereich 360
Prosody-Particle Pairs as Discourse Control Signs
Dafydd Gibbon and Claudia Sassen
Abstract
We address the problem of integrating the description of discourse particles and
their intonation into an HPSG-based lexicon for spontaneous speech applications, and
propose a lexical sign type called prosody-particle pair which has similar
structure to grammatical inflexions and is formally described as a nested attribute-value
structure. In our discussion we generealise a known class of `stylized intonations'
to include the level intonation of hesitation particles.
Previous descriptions of discourse particles, their roles and their relations to
intonation, have been informal; Our proposal is the first to model particle-intonation
relations explicitly and in detail as an inflexion-like complex sign in a formal lexicon.
The inclusion of the intonation of hesitation phenomena in the class of stylised
intonastions on formal and functional grounds is also new.*)
*) This paper was presented at the EUROSPEECH conference in Rhodes, Greech, September
1997.
Postscript-File (~71 k)
Anke Weinberger, 1998-01-07