Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine if respiratory and laryngeal function during spontaneous speech production were different for teachers with voice disorders as compared to teachers without voice problems. The basic research questions posed in this study, as assessed during spontaneous speaking were: 1) Do subjects with a voice disorder show differences in lung volume patterns relative to control subjects? 2) Do subjects with a voice disorder show differences in vocal fold approximation as measured by contact quotient and contact index relative to control subjects? 3) Are these between-group differences most pronounced for mock teaching tasks versus a conversational speaking task? 4) Do subjects with a voice disorder rely more on laryngeal versus respiratory-based strategies for increasing loudness level as compared to control subjects?Method: Nine teachers with and nine teachers without voice problems were included in this study. Respiratory function was measured with magnetometry, and laryngeal function was measured with electroglottography. Respiratory and laryngeal function were measured during three spontaneous speaking tasks: a simulated teaching task at a typical and increased loudness level, and a conversational speaking task. Two structured speaking tasks were included for comparison of electroglottography measures: a paragraph reading task and a sustained vowel.Results: Lung volume termination level in spontaneous speaking was significantly lower for the teachers with voice disorders relative to teachers without voice problems. Lung volume initiation level was lower for the teachers with versus without voice problems during teaching-related speaking tasks. Laryngeal function as assessed with electroglottography did not show between-group differences. Across tasks, the measure of contact index was lower (more negative) during the conversational speaking task as compared to the sustained vowel task, indicating greater contact phase asymmetry during vocal fold vibration.Conclusions: These findings suggest that teachers with a voice disorder use different speech breathing strategies than teachers without voice problems. Management of teachers with voice problems may need to incorporate respiratory training that alters lung volume levels during speaking. Future research is needed to determine whether altering such patterns results in improved voice parameters and self-perceived improvement in vocal symptoms.

This thesis investigates temporal characteristics of monosyllabic words (je, se, že) in semi-spontaneous dialogues and read speech. Our material consisted of two sets of recordings from six speakers (three men and three women). The speakers read a text first, and this reading was followed by a recording of a spontaneous dialogue. We investigated differences of temporal characteristics of monosyllabic words between the two types of speech. In addition, we also examined how these characteristics are affected by different variables, which included: position in a stress group, presence of stress, presence of pause and speaker's personality. It was found that the type of speech had a significant influence on duration ratio of sounds in examined words je, že. Word se remained unaffected by the type of speech and generally appeared as a very stable element. The type of speech also influenced variability in duration - this variability proved to be higher in spontaneous speech. The type of speech did not affect average duration of words je, se, že. Position in the stress group also proved to have a significant effect on duration of words. This effect was mainly caused by words which created isolated stress groups - words in such position had longer duration than words in other positions. For words je, se...

Le diagnostic différentiel de Démence Fronto-Temporale (DFT) vs Maladie d’Alzheimer (MA) n’est pas toujours facile à établir, et peuvent être confondus avec ceux de l’Aphasie Primaire Progressive (APP) » (Snowden et al. 2011) puisque l’anomie est présente dans les deux pathologies (Assal et al. 2009, Barkat-Defadas et al. 2008, Léger et al. 2007). La MA peut se décrire comme une démence dégénérative, avec une perte de tissu neuronal plutôt dans les lobes pariétal et temporal, résultant dans des difficultés dans les domaines de l’attention, les fonctions exécutives, la mémoire, les compétences pour apprendre, le langage, le calcul, et les fonctions viso-spatiales (Robin et al. 2003). De l’autre coté, la DFT est une démence qui atteint plutôt les lobes frontal et temporal elle peut se classifier d’après trois variantes: variante comportementale (DFTbf), Aphasie primaire progressive (APP) et démence sémantique (DS) (Kertesz et al 2003). Dans les deux cas nous pouvons trouver des troubles communs du à la perte du tissu dans les régions temporales, dans les étapes initiales de la maladie. L’analyse du langage chez des patients avec DFT et MA, et la corrélation de celui-ci avec le profil psycholinguistique permettra l’isolement des caractéristiques cliniques propres du profil des patients, a fin de proposer des critères plus spécifiques pour disjoindre le profil clinique de langage entre la DFT et la MA.La présente thèse sera réalisée en co-tutelle entre l’hôpital San Ignacio / Pontificia Universidad Javeriana et l’Université Lumière-Lyon2. Ce projet poursuit trois objectifs : (i) recueillir des données psycholinguistiques et de langage (tenant compte des années de scolarité et la sévérité du cours de la maladie), (ii) étudier et isoler les variantes linguistiques, qui peuvent influencer erronément la différence des critères de diagnostique entre la DFT et MA; (iii) raffiner les critères de diagnostique de la DFT et MA. 75 sujets ont été évalués (FTD n = 63, AD = 12, 22 sujets contrôles). Le test d'afastie (BAT) (Paradis 1989) a été utilisé pour identifier la discrimination auditive, la compréhension des structures syntaxiques (auditive et lecture), la production de phrases, la compréhension des narrations, la lecture de phrases, ainsi qu'une analyse des erreurs selon la structure syntaxique. En outre, nous évaluons les fonctions exécutives et les tests cognitifs de base. Les échantillons de parole spontanée ont été transcrits en utilisant le format CHAT et analysés à l'aide des programmes CLAN. En adition aux analyses descriptives, une analyse de proximité des distances euclidiennes au carré a été effectuée ainsi que des corrélations et régréssions.Les résultats montrent que patients atteints de PPA ont eu la pire performance dans la plupart des tâches langagières. Les DFTvf montrent une bonne peormance pour les tâches standardisées, mais montrent des difficultées isolées pour la compréhension de structures syntaxiques de type négatif qui peut s’associer à l'incapacité de représenter une séquence temporelle de la phrase. Les résultats démontrent que le discours spontané nous permet de différencier tous les groupes de patients. Le discours de ces patients peut être distinctif et reflète non seulement les capacités linguistiques du sujet, mais aussi les autres fonctions cognitives. Même si la théorie différencie les groupes PPA selon leur fluence, les résultats montrent qu’avec les variables qui portent sur la fluence de la parole qu'il n'est pas possible de différencier la variante non fluente et la logopénique. D'autres variables telles que les erreurs et la grammaire doivent être incluses dans les analyses pour obtenir le diagnostic différentiel des variantes de la APP. La parole spontanée démontre être un outil inestimable dans la pratique quotidienne du clinicien pour les diagnostics précoces et les critères pour un diagnostic différentiel entre la MA et la DFT – et ces trois variantes-. / Even though the large majority of cortical dementia is of the Alzheimer’s disease type, there are differential diagnosis limitations of current diagnostic criteria for early-onset Alzheimer disease (AD) and frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD, all three variants: behavioural variant frontotemporal –FTDbv-, Primary progressive aphasia –PPA- and semantic dementia –SD-). Initially, either AD and FTD share cognitive declines and first complain includes memory and no language in FTLD or language and no memory in AD. For instance, word retrieval deficits are common in AD and are thought to reflect a degradation of semantic memory. Yet, the nature of semantic deterioration in AD and the underlying neural correlates of these semantic memory changes remain largely unknown (Wierenga, 2011). On the other hand, PPA, FTDbv and SD have, as well, common behavioural features: PPA, prior to word loss, may show apathy and semantic dementia patients have, long before, the pure meaning loss, a great decline on emotional and conduct process. Since new guidelines for the differential diagnosis of behavioural FTD (Raskovsky, 2011) and selective language features –nonfluent/agrammatic, semantic, syntax, narrative - of the language variants are being revised (Gorno-Tempini, 2011) the present project present a novel way to define criteria regarding cognition profile through language analysis in all: AD and FTDL all variants. In sum, isolation of pure clinical characteristics in order to enriched the clinic profile and subtract the pure linguistic features will facilitate better common clinical compromise besides language differences (Zanini et al. 2011, Hernández et al. 2011, Ardila& Ramos, 2008). The present study aims to study through the Javeriana University Memory Clinic (PUJMC) at the San Ignacio Hospital in Colombia, based on the experience in the last 14 years where almost 3000 patients have been studied, language semiology between AD, FDT – all three variants. This project has three objectives: (i) to collect psycholinguistic and language data (taking into account the years of schooling and the severity of the course of the disease), (ii) study and isolate linguistic variants that may erroneously influence the difference in diagnostic criteria between DFT and MA; (iii) refining the diagnostic criteria for FTD and MA. 75 subjects were assessed (FTD n= 63, AD= 12, 22 control sample subjects). Bilingual Aphasia Test (BAT) (Paradis 1989) was used in order to identify auditory discrimination, syntactic structures comprehension (auditory and by reading), sentences production, auditory and by reading, comprehension of narrative structures, sentences reading, as well as an analysis of errors according to the syntactic structure. Additionally, we assess executive functions and basic cognition battery. Spontaneous speech samples were transcribed using the CHAT format, and analysed using the CLAN programs Besides a descriptive analysis, a hierarchical clustering through a squared Euclidean distances was done, where patients groups were formed by similar clinical neighbors regardless the FTD variant. Results show that deep language analysis is useful when heterogeneity w/groups is present and depends (in all groups) on the disease stage. PPA patients had the worse performance. bvFTD executive passive structure difficulty is associated with executive functions: The inability to represent a temporal sequence of the phrase –not understanding if.. Then). Results demonstrate that spontaneous speech allow us to differentiate between all groups of patients. Discourse of these patients can be distinctive and it reflects not only the subject's linguistic abilities but other cognitive functions as well....

A fala espontânea, também nomeada como discurso espontâneo, compõe a investigação de várias pesquisas nas áreas da fonética e da fonologia. Pesquisas relevantes na área podem ser observadas no Journal of the International Phonetic Association (JIPA), referência base para a nossa pesquisa e publicação onde constam estudos que investigam diferentes línguas nos aspectos fonético- acústicos da fala espontânea. O objetivo geral desta pesquisa é investigar aspectos fonético-acústicos da fala espontânea no português do Brasil e comparar a leitura oral tendo como justificativa principal o desafio que este estudo propõe diante da escassez de pesquisas em relação à fala espontânea com o português do Brasil. Nossas hipóteses basearam-se em estudos de alguns autores que estudaram a fala espontânea em diferentes línguas, como Barry e Andreeva; Shriberg (2001) e que chegaram a algumas definições para fala espontânea. Segundo esses autores, a fala espontânea se opõe ao discurso lido por ser uma fala despreparada e não treinada, além de apresentar duração de discurso mais longa e maior ocorrência de disfluência do que a leitura oral. Barry e Andreeva (2001) destacam também mudanças na prosódia, já que a função das palavras é diferente em cada uma dessas modalidades de fala. A partir destes trabalhos, surge o objetivo específico da pesquisa: verificar os aspectos estudados nos trabalhos acima citados no português do Brasil e caracterizar cada modalidade de fala (fala espontânea e a leitura oral) por meio da identificação de possíveis similaridades ou possíveis diferenças nos aspectos de: duração das frases, pausas (duração e número de ocorrências), freqüência fundamental (F0 inicial e F0 final e F0 máxima e F0 mínima) e medidas de Voice Onset Time (VOT) de consoantes oclusivas surdas. A coleta das amostras de fala espontânea e de leitura oral foi realizada a partir da observação dos métodos sugeridos por Local e Walker (2005) e da aplicação de provas semi-dirigidas por meio da gravação de diálogos quase-espontâneos, observadas em Nicolaidis (2001) e Andreeva e Barry (2001) em pesquisas com a fala espontânea. O corpus constitui a participação de quatro homens com idade média de trinta e seis anos. Os critérios para a seleção dos sujeitos foram: sujeitos do sexo masculino, falantes do português do Brasil, monolíngues, com nível superior (completo ou incompleto), bons leitores, não profissionais da voz, sem queixa e/ou alteração de fala e voz e que não fizessem uso de drogas. Na pesquisa consta a avaliação de 48 (quarenta e oito) frases de todos os sujeitos, sendo 12 (doze) de cada sujeito, 6 (seis) frases de fala espontânea e 6 (seis) de leitura oral do mesmo texto. Além destes dados, para as medidas de Voice Onset Time VOT, foram realizadas medidas de 60 (sessenta) consoantes oclusivas surdas, 10 (dez) de cada tipo de oclusiva (velar, alveolar e bilabial, com medidas na modalidade espontânea e na versão lida. As consoantes oclusivas analisadas foram retiradas das frases selecionadas e também colhidas de forma aleatória de outras frases do discurso. O programa para gravação e medidas acústicas foi o Winpitch Prow 1.0. Os resultados mostraram algumas particularidades de cada tipo de fala, porém vale ressaltar os aspectos obtivemos dados com significância estatística: maior ocorrência e durações mais longas de pausas na fala espontânea, F0 inicial mais alta do que e F0 final na leitura oral, F0 final mais alta em fala espontânea e medidas de VOT mais longas em leitura oral. / Spontaneous speech, also known as spontaneous speech constitutes the investigation of research in the fields of Phonetics and Phonology. The relevant research in the field has been published in the Journal of the International Phonetic Association (JIPA) and is reference of our research. The main objective of this study is to investigate the phonetic acoustic aspects of Brazilian Portuguese speech and to compare it to oral reading. The major challenge of this study is the lack of research related to the spontaneous speech in Brazilian Portuguese language. Our hypothesizes are based on the works of some authors who have studied the spontaneous speech in different languages. Barry, Andreeva and Shriberg (2001) and developed some definitions of spontaneous speech. According to these authors, spontaneous speech is much different than oral reading because it is unprepared and unrehearsed. Spontaneous speech typically results in a longer discourse duration and has a greater occurrence of disfluency than oral reading. Barry and Andreeva(2001), also studied the prosody changes, since the function of words is different in each of these speech modalities. From these studies is born the specific objective of this research; to examine the aspects studied in the research above as it relates to Brazilian Portuguese and to characterize each speech modality (spontaneous speech and oral reading) through the identification of possible similarities or possible differences in the following aspects: duration of the sentences, pauses (duration and number of occurrences), fundamental frequencies (F0 initial and F0 final and F0 maximum and F0 minimum) and Voice Onset Time (VOT) measurements of unvoiced occlusive consonants. The collection of spontaneous speech and oral reading samples was carried out through the observation of methods suggested by Local and Walker (2005) and the application of semi-directed proofs, through the record of nearly spontaneous dialogs, observed by Nicolaidis (2001), Andreeva and Barry(2001) in their research on spontaneous speech. The corpus was conducted with the participation of four men all 36 years old. The criteria used to select the subjects were that they be male individuals; Brazilian, monolingual, Portuguese speakers; graduation (complete or incomplete); good readers; amateur speakers; have no speech or voice alteration and non drug users. The study consists of the valuation of 48 sentences in total. Twelve sentences from each individual consisting of six spontaneous sentences and six oral readings of the same texts. In conjunction with these data Voice Onset Time measurements - Vot, were carried out in measurements of 60 unvoiced occlusive consonants, 10 of each kind of occlusive (velar, alveolar, and bilabial) along with measurements in the spontaneous modality and reading versions. The occlusive consonants analyzed were obtained from the selected sentences and also obtained in an aleatory way from another sentences of the discourse. The program used to record and acoustic measurements was Winpitch Prow 1.0. The results show some particularities of each kind of speech. It is striking we obtained significant the results aspects : pauses bigger (duration and number of occurrences) in the spontaneous speech, F0 initial increase than F0 final of the oral reading; F0 final increase in spontaneous speech and VOT measurements of longer duration than occurred in the oral readings.

Este trabalho apresenta uma reflexão acerca da natureza da entoação e de seu papel no funcionamento e no uso da linguagem, numa perspectiva interdisciplinar que traz para a discussão as contribuições de outras áreas do conhecimento que de uma maneira ou de outra se relacionam com a expressão na fala, seja por seus aspectos físicos, acústicos, seja por seus aspectos funcionais. Apresentamos evidências e argumentos que colocam a entoação como um fator primário na comunicação linguística que tem um papel fundamental na organização e transferência da informação de um sujeito a outro, tanto do ponto de vista da produção como da recepção. A tese aqui defendida é a de que a intenção comunicativa do falante o modo como este usa a linguagem enquanto ação junto a outros seres humanos é que determina a configuração melódica, precedendo a seleção e combinação dos constituintes do enunciado. Partimos da consideração da situação atual dos estudos prosódicos com respeito à entoação que encontramos descrita em Ladd (1996), Hirst e DiCristo (1998) e Fox (2000), entre outros, e apontamos alguns dos seus principais impasses e as questões epistemológicas relacionadas. Em seguida apresentamos as perspectivas de outras áreas de fora da linguística que direta ou indiretamente se reportam à entoação, seja como intenção, como é o caso da filosofia da linguagem, a sociologia, e a teoria literária, seja como melodia nas fronteiras do fazer teatral e da prática musical. Encontramos aí aproximações significativas entre as noções de estilo e gênero do discurso e a noção de intenção comunicativa que questionam a possibilidade de uma separação estanque entre o uso prático e o uso poético, musical, artístico da linguagem. Essa constatação nos levou a considerar uma grande categoria da atividade humana que denominamos práxis vocal que inclui, além da fala e do canto mais convencionais, formas intermediárias tais como narrativas orais, chamados, pregões, discursos políticos, declamações artísticas e religiosas como o recitativo e o salmodiar, entre outras. Estas formas empregam a modulação da frequência fundamental da voz de maneiras muito particulares e podem ser situadas na fronteira entre a linguagem e a música. Empreendemos, por isso, uma investigação acerca das relações, semelhanças e diferenças entre música e linguagem. Desta aproximação surgiu uma das ideias centrais desta tese, que é a relação entre estilo melódico e gênero de discurso nas manifestações orais. Percebemos que a realização de uma intenção comunicativa, seja numa fala espontânea, num discurso ou numa canção, começa com a escolha do gênero mais adequado à expressão do conteúdo desejado, e a partir dessa escolha é que fica determinado o estilo, que corresponde às regras de elaboração do discurso (linguístico, musical ou híbrido). A violação dessas regras que observamos quando há inconsistências melódicas na fala decorada, por exemplo, são decorrentes da necessidade de se criar uma melodia a partir de um texto já dado, fato que não acontece na fala espontânea. / This work presents a reflection about the nature of intonation, and about its role in how language works and it is used, within a interdisciplinary perspective that brings contributions from other areas that, in a way or another, relate to the issue of expression in speech, whether by its physical, acoustic features or by its functional aspects. We present evidences that show intonation as a primary factor in linguistic communication, having a fundamental role in organising and transferring information from one subject to another, from the point of view of production as well as perception. The main reasoning is that the communicative intention of the speaker - the way he uses languages as an action toward other human beings - determines the melodic configuration, that preceding selection and combination of the utterance contituents. Considering the recent development of investigation of prosody as it is described in Ladd (1996), Hirst e DiCristo (1998) and Fox (2000), among others, we show some of its hindrances and the epistemological issues related to them. Following that, we present perspectives brought from other areas outside linguistics that in a direct or indirect manner relate to the issues around intonation, whether as the speaker\'s intention, as we see in the field of philosophy of language, sociology and literary theory, or as a melodic elaboration in theater and musical practices. Within these new perspectives we found out striking similarities between the concepts of style and speech genre and the idea of communicative intention, that dispute a clear distinction of the practical use of language from its poetic, musical, artistic use. This remark have led us to consider a grand category of human activity that we named vocal praxis, including, besides ordinary speech and song, intermediate forms as those found in oral narratives, callings, auctioneering, political discourses and artistic declamation such as the recitative and chant. These forms employ the modulation of the fundamental frequency of the voice in very peculiar ways, and they may be situated close to the boundaries of speech and song. For that reason we endeavoured an inquiry on relationships, similarities and differences between music and language, This approximation produced one of the central ideas of this thesis, i.e. the connection of melodic style and speech genre along the continuum of vocal (oral) manifestations. We realized that the actualization of a communicative intention, whether in spontaneous speech, in a political discourse or in a song, begins with the choice of the adequate genre to the desired expression of the content; after this choice the style is determined, leading to the rules of elaboration of the particular discourse (linguistic, musical or hybrid). The violation of these rules, that we observe as melodic incoherences when someone speaks something by heart or reading aloud, are the consequence of an artificial situation that demands creating a new melody to a given text, which doesn\'t happen in spontaneous speech.

Hesitation use is common among all speakers, regardless of whether they are engaged in their dominant or non-dominant language (Fehringer & Fry, 2007; Reed, 2000). The question is whether a bilingual speaker will engage in the same types of hesitations in both languages. If hesitation patterns can be identified consistently across speakers regardless of language, their use as an acoustic cue for speaker identification may be possible. This study examines differences in hesitation use across languages and speaking contexts (reading vs. conversation) in bilingual speakers. Twenty Spanish-English bilinguals (ages 19 -31 years) were tested as part of a larger speaker identification project focusing on bilingual speech patterns. These individuals were recorded in a sound-treated booth while speaking extemporaneously and reading a standardized passage in both Spanish and English. Unfilled pause length and speech segment durations were obtained from one minute speech samples using Praat scripts (Boersma & Weenink, 2014). Pause to speaking ratios were computed in Excel. The number of filled pauses were determined from the same one minute speech samples in English and Spanish. Differences in planning style were demonstrated with step graphs which compared both the frequency and length of alternations between speech and pauses in two participants with different planning styles. Wilcoxon signed ranks tests revealed significant differences in the use of unfilled pauses across speaking contexts in both languages. Both pause to speaking ratios and pause durations were larger in spontaneous speech when compared to read speech. Speech segment durations were shorter in extemporaneous speech and filled pauses were more common in spontaneous speech. Cross-language comparisons were considered within each speaking condition. Results indicated few instances where there were significant differences. There were longer speech segment durations in read speech and more filled pause use in spontaneous speech in English. Further demonstration of these patterns was illustrated through step graphs. The similarities in the hesitation phenomenon between languages suggests that bilingual speakers often use the same planning aspects between languages and carryover aspects of speech production from their first language to their second (Fehringer & Fry, 2007). Therefore, comparisons within and across languages within a specific speaking condition may be useful in speaker identification. However, these findings also indicate the need for caution when comparing speech samples across speaking conditions using unfilled and filled pauses. One should consider hesitation as one of several acoustic cues for use in speaker identification in a cross-language situation.

This thesis focuses on acoustic and prosodic (fundamental frequency (F0), duration, intensity) analyses of French from large-scale audio corpora portraying different speaking styles: prepared and spontaneous speech. We are interested in particularities of segmental phonetics and prosody that may characterize pronunciation. In French, many errors caused by automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems arise from frequent homophone words, for which ASR systems depend on language model weights. Automatic classification (AC) was conducted to discriminate homophones by only acoustic and prosodic properties depending on their part-of-speech function or their position within prosodic words. Results from AC of two homophone pairs, et/est (and/is) and à/a (ton/has), revealed that the et/est pair was more discriminable. A selection of prosodic and inter-phoneme attributes, that is 15 attributes, performed as good results as with 62 attributes. Then corresponding perceptual tests have been conducted to verify if humans also use acoustico-prosodic parameters for the discrimination. Results suggested that acoustic and prosodic information might help in operating the correct choice in similar ambiguous syntactic structures. From the hypothesis that pronunciation variants were due to varying prosodic constraints, we examined overall prosodic properties of French on a lexical and phrase level. The comparison between lexical and grammatical words revealed F0 rise and lengthening at the end of final syllable on lexical words, while these phenomena were not observed for grammatical words. Analyses also revealed that the mean profile of a n length noun phrase could be different from that of a n length noun with a low F0 at the beginning of a noun phrase. The prosodic profiles can be helpful to locate word boundaries. Findings in this thesis will lead to localize focus and named-entity using discriminative classifiers, and to improve word boundary locations by an ASR post-processing step.

Este trabalho apresenta uma reflexão acerca da natureza da entoação e de seu papel no funcionamento e no uso da linguagem, numa perspectiva interdisciplinar que traz para a discussão as contribuições de outras áreas do conhecimento que de uma maneira ou de outra se relacionam com a expressão na fala, seja por seus aspectos físicos, acústicos, seja por seus aspectos funcionais. Apresentamos evidências e argumentos que colocam a entoação como um fator primário na comunicação linguística que tem um papel fundamental na organização e transferência da informação de um sujeito a outro, tanto do ponto de vista da produção como da recepção. A tese aqui defendida é a de que a intenção comunicativa do falante o modo como este usa a linguagem enquanto ação junto a outros seres humanos é que determina a configuração melódica, precedendo a seleção e combinação dos constituintes do enunciado. Partimos da consideração da situação atual dos estudos prosódicos com respeito à entoação que encontramos descrita em Ladd (1996), Hirst e DiCristo (1998) e Fox (2000), entre outros, e apontamos alguns dos seus principais impasses e as questões epistemológicas relacionadas. Em seguida apresentamos as perspectivas de outras áreas de fora da linguística que direta ou indiretamente se reportam à entoação, seja como intenção, como é o caso da filosofia da linguagem, a sociologia, e a teoria literária, seja como melodia nas fronteiras do fazer teatral e da prática musical. Encontramos aí aproximações significativas entre as noções de estilo e gênero do discurso e a noção de intenção comunicativa que questionam a possibilidade de uma separação estanque entre o uso prático e o uso poético, musical, artístico da linguagem. Essa constatação nos levou a considerar uma grande categoria da atividade humana que denominamos práxis vocal que inclui, além da fala e do canto mais convencionais, formas intermediárias tais como narrativas orais, chamados, pregões, discursos políticos, declamações artísticas e religiosas como o recitativo e o salmodiar, entre outras. Estas formas empregam a modulação da frequência fundamental da voz de maneiras muito particulares e podem ser situadas na fronteira entre a linguagem e a música. Empreendemos, por isso, uma investigação acerca das relações, semelhanças e diferenças entre música e linguagem. Desta aproximação surgiu uma das ideias centrais desta tese, que é a relação entre estilo melódico e gênero de discurso nas manifestações orais. Percebemos que a realização de uma intenção comunicativa, seja numa fala espontânea, num discurso ou numa canção, começa com a escolha do gênero mais adequado à expressão do conteúdo desejado, e a partir dessa escolha é que fica determinado o estilo, que corresponde às regras de elaboração do discurso (linguístico, musical ou híbrido). A violação dessas regras que observamos quando há inconsistências melódicas na fala decorada, por exemplo, são decorrentes da necessidade de se criar uma melodia a partir de um texto já dado, fato que não acontece na fala espontânea. / This work presents a reflection about the nature of intonation, and about its role in how language works and it is used, within a interdisciplinary perspective that brings contributions from other areas that, in a way or another, relate to the issue of expression in speech, whether by its physical, acoustic features or by its functional aspects. We present evidences that show intonation as a primary factor in linguistic communication, having a fundamental role in organising and transferring information from one subject to another, from the point of view of production as well as perception. The main reasoning is that the communicative intention of the speaker - the way he uses languages as an action toward other human beings - determines the melodic configuration, that preceding selection and combination of the utterance contituents. Considering the recent development of investigation of prosody as it is described in Ladd (1996), Hirst e DiCristo (1998) and Fox (2000), among others, we show some of its hindrances and the epistemological issues related to them. Following that, we present perspectives brought from other areas outside linguistics that in a direct or indirect manner relate to the issues around intonation, whether as the speaker\'s intention, as we see in the field of philosophy of language, sociology and literary theory, or as a melodic elaboration in theater and musical practices. Within these new perspectives we found out striking similarities between the concepts of style and speech genre and the idea of communicative intention, that dispute a clear distinction of the practical use of language from its poetic, musical, artistic use. This remark have led us to consider a grand category of human activity that we named vocal praxis, including, besides ordinary speech and song, intermediate forms as those found in oral narratives, callings, auctioneering, political discourses and artistic declamation such as the recitative and chant. These forms employ the modulation of the fundamental frequency of the voice in very peculiar ways, and they may be situated close to the boundaries of speech and song. For that reason we endeavoured an inquiry on relationships, similarities and differences between music and language, This approximation produced one of the central ideas of this thesis, i.e. the connection of melodic style and speech genre along the continuum of vocal (oral) manifestations. We realized that the actualization of a communicative intention, whether in spontaneous speech, in a political discourse or in a song, begins with the choice of the adequate genre to the desired expression of the content; after this choice the style is determined, leading to the rules of elaboration of the particular discourse (linguistic, musical or hybrid). The violation of these rules, that we observe as melodic incoherences when someone speaks something by heart or reading aloud, are the consequence of an artificial situation that demands creating a new melody to a given text, which doesn\'t happen in spontaneous speech.

A fala espontânea, também nomeada como discurso espontâneo, compõe a investigação de várias pesquisas nas áreas da fonética e da fonologia. Pesquisas relevantes na área podem ser observadas no Journal of the International Phonetic Association (JIPA), referência base para a nossa pesquisa e publicação onde constam estudos que investigam diferentes línguas nos aspectos fonético- acústicos da fala espontânea. O objetivo geral desta pesquisa é investigar aspectos fonético-acústicos da fala espontânea no português do Brasil e comparar a leitura oral tendo como justificativa principal o desafio que este estudo propõe diante da escassez de pesquisas em relação à fala espontânea com o português do Brasil. Nossas hipóteses basearam-se em estudos de alguns autores que estudaram a fala espontânea em diferentes línguas, como Barry e Andreeva; Shriberg (2001) e que chegaram a algumas definições para fala espontânea. Segundo esses autores, a fala espontânea se opõe ao discurso lido por ser uma fala despreparada e não treinada, além de apresentar duração de discurso mais longa e maior ocorrência de disfluência do que a leitura oral. Barry e Andreeva (2001) destacam também mudanças na prosódia, já que a função das palavras é diferente em cada uma dessas modalidades de fala. A partir destes trabalhos, surge o objetivo específico da pesquisa: verificar os aspectos estudados nos trabalhos acima citados no português do Brasil e caracterizar cada modalidade de fala (fala espontânea e a leitura oral) por meio da identificação de possíveis similaridades ou possíveis diferenças nos aspectos de: duração das frases, pausas (duração e número de ocorrências), freqüência fundamental (F0 inicial e F0 final e F0 máxima e F0 mínima) e medidas de Voice Onset Time (VOT) de consoantes oclusivas surdas. A coleta das amostras de fala espontânea e de leitura oral foi realizada a partir da observação dos métodos sugeridos por Local e Walker (2005) e da aplicação de provas semi-dirigidas por meio da gravação de diálogos quase-espontâneos, observadas em Nicolaidis (2001) e Andreeva e Barry (2001) em pesquisas com a fala espontânea. O corpus constitui a participação de quatro homens com idade média de trinta e seis anos. Os critérios para a seleção dos sujeitos foram: sujeitos do sexo masculino, falantes do português do Brasil, monolíngues, com nível superior (completo ou incompleto), bons leitores, não profissionais da voz, sem queixa e/ou alteração de fala e voz e que não fizessem uso de drogas. Na pesquisa consta a avaliação de 48 (quarenta e oito) frases de todos os sujeitos, sendo 12 (doze) de cada sujeito, 6 (seis) frases de fala espontânea e 6 (seis) de leitura oral do mesmo texto. Além destes dados, para as medidas de Voice Onset Time VOT, foram realizadas medidas de 60 (sessenta) consoantes oclusivas surdas, 10 (dez) de cada tipo de oclusiva (velar, alveolar e bilabial, com medidas na modalidade espontânea e na versão lida. As consoantes oclusivas analisadas foram retiradas das frases selecionadas e também colhidas de forma aleatória de outras frases do discurso. O programa para gravação e medidas acústicas foi o Winpitch Prow 1.0. Os resultados mostraram algumas particularidades de cada tipo de fala, porém vale ressaltar os aspectos obtivemos dados com significância estatística: maior ocorrência e durações mais longas de pausas na fala espontânea, F0 inicial mais alta do que e F0 final na leitura oral, F0 final mais alta em fala espontânea e medidas de VOT mais longas em leitura oral. / Spontaneous speech, also known as spontaneous speech constitutes the investigation of research in the fields of Phonetics and Phonology. The relevant research in the field has been published in the Journal of the International Phonetic Association (JIPA) and is reference of our research. The main objective of this study is to investigate the phonetic acoustic aspects of Brazilian Portuguese speech and to compare it to oral reading. The major challenge of this study is the lack of research related to the spontaneous speech in Brazilian Portuguese language. Our hypothesizes are based on the works of some authors who have studied the spontaneous speech in different languages. Barry, Andreeva and Shriberg (2001) and developed some definitions of spontaneous speech. According to these authors, spontaneous speech is much different than oral reading because it is unprepared and unrehearsed. Spontaneous speech typically results in a longer discourse duration and has a greater occurrence of disfluency than oral reading. Barry and Andreeva(2001), also studied the prosody changes, since the function of words is different in each of these speech modalities. From these studies is born the specific objective of this research; to examine the aspects studied in the research above as it relates to Brazilian Portuguese and to characterize each speech modality (spontaneous speech and oral reading) through the identification of possible similarities or possible differences in the following aspects: duration of the sentences, pauses (duration and number of occurrences), fundamental frequencies (F0 initial and F0 final and F0 maximum and F0 minimum) and Voice Onset Time (VOT) measurements of unvoiced occlusive consonants. The collection of spontaneous speech and oral reading samples was carried out through the observation of methods suggested by Local and Walker (2005) and the application of semi-directed proofs, through the record of nearly spontaneous dialogs, observed by Nicolaidis (2001), Andreeva and Barry(2001) in their research on spontaneous speech. The corpus was conducted with the participation of four men all 36 years old. The criteria used to select the subjects were that they be male individuals; Brazilian, monolingual, Portuguese speakers; graduation (complete or incomplete); good readers; amateur speakers; have no speech or voice alteration and non drug users. The study consists of the valuation of 48 sentences in total. Twelve sentences from each individual consisting of six spontaneous sentences and six oral readings of the same texts. In conjunction with these data Voice Onset Time measurements - Vot, were carried out in measurements of 60 unvoiced occlusive consonants, 10 of each kind of occlusive (velar, alveolar, and bilabial) along with measurements in the spontaneous modality and reading versions. The occlusive consonants analyzed were obtained from the selected sentences and also obtained in an aleatory way from another sentences of the discourse. The program used to record and acoustic measurements was Winpitch Prow 1.0. The results show some particularities of each kind of speech. It is striking we obtained significant the results aspects : pauses bigger (duration and number of occurrences) in the spontaneous speech, F0 initial increase than F0 final of the oral reading; F0 final increase in spontaneous speech and VOT measurements of longer duration than occurred in the oral readings.

Les buts de la présente étude étaient de délimiter une unité de l'analyse de l'oral spontané comparable en français et en slovène, d'examiner l'influence des éléments contextuels sur la structuration de cette unité et de dégager les combinaisons de structures linguistiques les plus efficaces lors de trois stratégies communicatives de base : lutte pour la parole, appel à l'attention et la demande de réaction. L'analyse a montré que dans les deux langues, l'unité de base de l'oral peut être délimitée par la chute conjointe de l'intensité et de la hauteur tonale. Cette unité, reprise par la méthodologie de Morel et Danon-Boileau [1998] est dénominée le paragraphe oral avec ses constituants préambule, rhème et postrhème. Une fois l'unité de base délimitée, l'étude examine l'influence des éléments contextuels sur la structuration de l'oral spontané. L'analyse de la narration, de l'argumentation et de la confrontation d'opinions différentes a montré surtout l'influence du type du discours sur la longueur du préambule et sur sa composition interne. Le profil des locuteurs semble avoir la plus grande influence sur le choix des ligateurs. En ce qui concerne les stratégies des locuteurs, les résultats montrent que lors de la lutte pour la parole, le locuteur qui produit ses énoncés avec une intensité plus forte et un surplus de marques du travail de formulation va à la fin d'un chevauchement garder la parole. Quand il demande auprès de celui qui l'écoute une réaction, il le réalise par une chute de l'intensité à la fin d'une structure syntaxique, ce qui coïncide avec la fin d'un rhème. / The aims of the present study are to define the unit for the analysis of the spontaneous speech in french and in slovene, to examine the influence of the context elements on the structure of this unit and to analyse the most efficient combinations of the linguistic structures whithin three basic speech strategies: turn taking, seeking for attention and request for reaction. The analysis shows that the basic unit of spontaneaous speech can be defined by simultaneaous fall of intensity and pitch in both languages. This basic unit is defined as speech paragraph with its components preamble, rheme and postrheme. In the next step, the study examines the influence of the context elements on the structuration of the spontaneous spoken discourse. The analysis of the narration, argumentation and confrontation of different opinions shows the influence of the discourse genre on the lenght and the internal structure of the preamble. On the other hand, the speaker's profile seems to have the most important effect on the use of the connectors. The analysis of the speaker's strategies in spontaneous spoken discourse shows that when two speakers start speaking at the same moment and fight for their turns, the speaker who increases the intensity, produces more features of non final formulation will more likely keep or get his turn. When a speaker wants the listener to react in order to confirm his speaking, he will realise a fall of intensity at the end of a syntactic unit, which usually takes place at the end of a rheme.