{"id":643,"date":"2010-07-15T10:00:11","date_gmt":"2010-07-15T08:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elanguage.net\/blogs\/booknotices\/?p=643"},"modified":"2010-05-10T14:58:08","modified_gmt":"2010-05-10T12:58:08","slug":"methods-in-empirical-prosody-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/?p=643","title":{"rendered":"Methods in empirical prosody research"},"content":{"rendered":"
Methods in empirical prosody research.<\/strong> Ed. by Stefan Sudhoff<\/strong>, Denisa Lenertov\u00e1<\/strong>, Roland Meyer<\/strong>, Sandra Pappert<\/strong>, Petra Augurzky<\/strong>, Ina Mleinek<\/strong>, Nicole Richter<\/strong>, and Johannes Schlie\u00dfer<\/strong>. (Language, context, and cognition 3.) Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2006. Pp. 391. ISBN 9783110188561<\/a>. $160 (Hb).<\/div>\n

Reviewed by Sabine Zerbian<\/a><\/strong>, University of the Witwatersrand<\/em><\/p>\n

A collection of state-of-the-art articles on methodological questions in laboratory phonology, this book is the follow-up publication of a workshop held in Leipzig, Germany, in October 2004. Since the inception of laboratory phonology in the early 1990s, the methodology of prosodic research has become an issue in its own right. The contributors\u2019 backgrounds reflect the anchoring of empirical prosody research at the interface of theoretical linguistics, psycholinguistics, and phonetics.<\/p>\n

The contributors investigate three methodological areas: acoustic parameters, annotation practices, and experimental design. In the opening article \u2018Acoustic segment durations in prosodic research: A practical guide\u2019, Alice Turk<\/strong>, Satsuki Nakai<\/strong>, and Mariko Sugahara<\/strong> present a method for acoustic speech segmentation that is based on consonantal constriction and is suitable for duration measurements. In \u2018Stylization of pitch contours\u2019, Dik Hermes<\/strong> discusses methods that reduce pitch contours to their perceptually essential properties such as close-copy stylization, which contains only the minimum of tonal specification without audibly affecting the intonation, and a syllable-based method, which represents a tone for every syllable.<\/p>\n

In \u2018Voice source parameters and prosodic analysis\u2019, Christophe d\u2019Alessandro<\/strong> draws attention to voice quality, which is often neglected in the description of intonation. Although voice quality is phonemic in some languages and is important for naturalness in all languages, scholarly work often concentrates exclusively on fundamental frequency (F0) and duration. Greg Kochanski<\/strong>, \u2018Prosody beyond fundamental frequency\u2019, also stresses the importance of acoustic parameters beyond F0 and duration. He approaches this topic from a theoretical point of view, arguing that information channel intonation is exploited effectively by speakers. Klaus J. Kohler<\/strong> compares models of prosodic phonology in \u2018Paradigms in experimental prosodic analysis: From measurement to function\u2019. Drawing on data collected in various experiments, Kohler argues in favor of the contour-based approach of the Kiel Intonation Model rather than the prevalent tone sequence model of the autosegmental-metrical approach.<\/p>\n

Stefan Baumann<\/strong> deals with the annotation of prosody with respect to information structure in \u2018Information structure and prosody: Linguistic categories for spoken language annotation\u2019. He describes the development of an annotation system based on the analysis of a corpus of German newspaper texts. In \u2018Time types and time trees: Prosodic mining and alignment of temporally annotated data\u2019, Dafydd Gibbon<\/strong> presents a methodology to derive hierarchical models of timing from annotated speech data.<\/p>\n

The section on experimental design begins with an article by Fred Cummins<\/strong>, \u2018Probing the dynamics of speech production\u2019, which presents experimental designs that intervene in the speech production process, thereby reducing inter-speaker variability. These designs can be fruitfully applied in the investigation of rhythmic organization, phrasing, and pausing. In \u2018Using interactive tasks to elicit natural dialogue\u2019 Kiwako Ito<\/strong> and Shari R. Speer<\/strong> compare the naturalness of elicited data collected through scripted and spontaneous speech.<\/p>\n

Duane G. Watson<\/strong>, Christine A. Gunlogson<\/strong>, and Michael K. Tanenhaus<\/strong> explore \u2018Online methods for the investigation of prosody\u2019. They present the use of eye-tracking in prosody research, taking the interpretation of H* and L+H* accents in English as an example. In \u2018How to obtain and process perceptual judgements of intonational meaning\u2019 Toni Rietveld <\/strong>and Aoju Chen<\/strong> evaluate existing scaling methods with respect to their suitability for perceptual judgments.<\/p>\n

Carlos Gussenhoven<\/strong> discusses methods that distinguish between discrete and gradual differences in pitch contours in \u2018Experimental approaches to establishing discreteness of intonational contrasts\u2019. Finally, Katrin Schneider<\/strong>, Britta Lintfert<\/strong>, Grzegorz Dogil<\/strong>, and Bernd M\u00f6bius<\/strong> explore the \u2018Phonetic grounding of prosodic categories\u2019. They approach this question from the angle of speech production, perception, and acoustics.<\/p>\n

The book also includes portraits of the authors, an author index, and a subject index.<\/p>\n

This volume will be a useful reference for those working on experimental research in prosody, as it addresses a wide range of meta-theoretical questions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Methods in empirical prosody research. Ed. by Stefan Sudhoff, Denisa Lenertov\u00e1, Roland Meyer, Sandra Pappert, Petra Augurzky, Ina Mleinek, Nicole Richter, and Johannes Schlie\u00dfer. (Language, context, and cognition 3.) Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2006. Pp. 391. ISBN 9783110188561. $160 (Hb). Reviewed by Sabine Zerbian, University of the Witwatersrand A collection of state-of-the-art articles on methodological […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=643"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":644,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643\/revisions\/644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}