This dissertation studies the prosodic structure of the variety of Jordanian Arabic that is spoken in the rural areas of the Governorate of Irbid (IA) by investigating the role of syntactic structure in the formation of prosodic domains. It empirically explores the word-level, phrase-level and clause-level prosody of IA and attempts to account for these empirical results in a framework based on the standard syntactic-prosodic interface principles developed in Match Theory (Selkirk 2011) and formulated as OT constraints (Prince & Smolensky 1993). The basic hypotheses in this dissertation are that the prosodic word (ω), phonological phrase (Φ) and intonational phrase (ι) are present in IA, and that they are anchored in syntactic constituents. Relying on hypotheses derived from the MATCH constraints (Selkirk 2011) that ensure the syntactic-prosodic correspondence, ω, Φ and ι should respectively match the grammatical word, syntactic phrase and clause and should recursively match embedded syntactic constituents. A series of experiments was designed to test the hypotheses. Twenty native speakers (ten males and ten females) of Jordanian Arabic living in Irbid participated in the tasks. Each pair of participants performed several tasks in one session. Two game-based tasks were designed to explore intonational and temporal cues to Φ and ι boundaries and examine their relation to XPs and clauses, respectively. Two additional reading tasks were designed to determine the application domain of post-lexical segmental processes in IA (the coarticulation of pharyngealization and vowel hiatus resolution). The collected tokens were submitted to acoustic and statistical analyses. Based on the results of these experiments, the existence of the ω, Φ and ι is confirmed and our understanding of their segmental and suprasegmental cues is refined. ω’s match grammatical words and are the domain of stress, realization of the feminine -t suffix and coarticulation of pharyngealization. Φ`s match syntactic phrases and are cued suprasegmentally: their right boundaries are marked by low phrase accents (L-) and pre-boundary syllable lengthening. As for ι`s, they match clauses and are cued by additional final lengthening, boundary tones (H% or L%) and resistance to vowel reduction. There is also ample evidence that syntactic nesting motivates prosodic recursion. At the ω level, the primary/secondary status of genitive constructs of stress mirrors syntactic nesting. At the Φ level, recursion is evidenced by gradient pre-boundary syllable lengthening, which is greater at the right boundaries of higher prosodic subcategories that match larger syntactic domains. As for recursion at the ι level, it is not only cued by gradient pre-boundary syllable lengthening, but also by boundary tones: continuative H% are used at sentence-internal ι boundaries, but L% tones are cues to boundaries of larger ι’s. However, prosodic recursion is not unconstrained in IA: prosodic domains can only consist of two subcategories, i.e. a minimal and maximal layers. In this way, prosodic recursion is neither prohibited as proposed in the early version of Strict Layer Hypothesis (Nespor &Vogel 1986, Selkirk 1986), nor free to perfectly mirror syntactic nesting. As in most previous case studies, it is proposed that the one-to-one correspondence constraints of Match Theory (Selkirk 2011) account for the prosodic patterns in IA, but have to be complemented with language-specific markedness constraints on phonological weight, exhaustivity and recursion. It is also shown that these explanatory principles can, with minor reorganization, account for the prosodic patterns described in other Arabic dialects.

Language is a common metaphor used to describe dance and how people understand, observe, dance and relate to dances. This metaphor implies that dance has a communicative aspect between people and there is a structure to the patterns found in the dance. The pattern of interest in language is the pattern of articulation of sounds. The dance investigated in this thesis is the Foxtrot, a partner dance, with a view to examining how the structure of this dance is articulated using theories from oral language phonology and sign language phonology. In particular it looks at sonority and prosodic units in sign language and how they apply to dance. The research questions are: (1) Can sonority be defined for dance and used in the analysis of dance steps, and (2) Can dance steps be organized into prosodic units? This thesis makes the following arguments: Dance has a sonority based on the articulators used to articulate the dance step. The steps are structured around the sonority of the articulators used in the step. In the Foxtrot sonority is defined by the proximity of the articulators to the centre of mass of the dancer. The closer to the centre of mass the more sonorous the movement. The most sonorous movements start the step while following movements are less sonorous. This pattern is repeated with the other prosodic unit of the foot, where the most prominent step starts the foot. The conclusion is that theories from phonology can be applied to the Foxtrot and may be able to be extended to other types of dance. / Graduate

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Cette thèse a pour objectif de décrire et d’analyser le rôle de la prosodie dans la structuration de l’énoncé en mooré (langue à ton parlée au Burkina Faso).Le problème majeur que je tente de résoudre dans ce travail est celui de la réalisation de l’intonation indicatrice de la structure prosodique dans les langues tonales. En d’autres termes, comment l’intonation se réalise-t-elle en mooré, une langue où le ton qui utilise les mêmes paramètres acoustiques doit garder son rôle phonologique ? Les explications détaillées du rôle et de la réalisation du ton et de l’intonation me permettent de déterminer une structure prosodique qui peut rendre compte de l’organisation du mooré parlé. D'un point de vue méthodologique, je m'inspire de la théorie de l'intonation de P. Martin, (2009, 2013, 2015), étant consciente qu’une certaine adaptation est nécessaire du fait de la nature de la langue étudiée.Cette thèse comporte deux parties : dans la première partie, je propose une définition des principaux termes de l’analyse et une présentation du mooré ; dans la deuxième, je m’appuie sur des études expérimentales pour analyser les principaux problèmes.Je m'intéresse, dans un premier temps à la réalisation phonétique du ton. Cette étude m'a permis de confirmer que la hauteur relative des tons est le paramètre le plus important pour distinguer les différents types de tons en mooré.Ensuite, l’examen de la relation entre ton et intonation révèle que la réalisation des tons lexicaux est affectée par celle de l’intonation surtout au niveau des frontières prosodiques. De plus dans l’abaissement tonal (downstep ou downdrift), la réalisation des tons est assujettie à la règle tonale, mais le domaine de l’abaissement est délimité par les frontières prosodiques, lieux de manifestation l’intonation.Enfin, l’étude sur la structuration des énoncés dans la parole lue et spontanée montre, à partir de l’identification d’évènements prosodiques, que les indices acoustiques tels que : la durée des pauses, l’allongement des syllabes finales et les variations de la fréquence fondamentale (F0) accompagnent les frontières perçues. Dans la parole lue, le resetting de F0 au début des unités et les variations de durée des syllabes de frontières prosodiques constituent les principaux indices de démarcation. Dans la parole spontanée, les résultats montrent qu’il y a une relation d’échange entre la durée des syllabes de frontières et celle des pauses et qu’elle s’associe aux variations de F0 pour permettre la structuration des énoncés en mooré / This dissertation describes the role of prosody in the organization of oral speech in Moore (a tone language spoken in Burkina Faso). It investigates the realization of intonation as a sign of prosodic structure in an African tone language. The main problem dealt in this study is: how does intonation work in moore, a tone language in which tone has already an important phonological role?The aim of the analysis is to explain the realization of tone and intonation in order to identify a prosodic structure which will account for the prosodic organization in moore. The theoretical framework is based on P. Martin’s theory of intonation in romance languages (2009, 2013, and 2015). Of course amendments were necessary to adapt it to moore.This dissertation is made up of two sections; the first one is dedicated to defining some important notions of the study and presenting general characteristics of moore. In the second section, experiments were carried out to address the main issues.The phonetic realization of tone was first examined. This study confirms that the relative height of the pitch is the main acoustic parameter used to distinguish the two types of tones in moore.Then the analysis of the relation between tone and intonation reveals that the realization of tones is affected by intonation especially at prosodic boundaries. When downstep is applied, tonal rules determine the realization of tones. However, the domain of the downstep is also marked out by prosodic boundaries (place of the realization of intonation).Finally, based on the identification of prosodic events, the study of moore oral speech (both spontaneous and reading speech) organization shows that acoustic parameters such as: duration of pauses, final syllable lengthening and F0 variations are found with perceived boundaries. The analysis of reading speech reveals that F0 resetting and variations of boundary syllables duration are the major indices which mark the limits of prosodic phrases. In spontaneous speech, the results suggest the existence of a trading relationship between pauses duration and boundary syllables duration. Therefore, the prosodic organization of utterances in moore derives from the combination of F0 variations and the trading relationship.

This study is a synchronic derivational analysis of phonological phenomena in three dialects of Sudanese Arabic. Its main goal is to provide a unified prosodic account of syncope and of the phonological processes functioning as strategies of repairing unsyllabified segments in the dialects of Urban Central Sudanese Arabic, Shukriiya, and Hamar. The domains of these processes are argued to follow from the degree of restriction that dialects place on word-level and phrase-level syllabification. To this end, the study proposes an analysis of syllabification in the three dialects that identifies the degree to which word-level syllabification is exhaustive, the segments that may be marked extrasyllabic and the conditions regulating their extrasyllabic status, the phrasal level at which these segments must be syllabified, and the level at which alteration to syllable structure is disallowed. In identifying the degrees of restriction dialects place on syllabification and resyllabification, the analysis provides a principled explanation for the levels of repair of unsyllabified segments as well as the domains of syncope. The study also provides an analysis of word stress and an analysis of phonological phrase formation. By revealing and accounting for the interesting phonological patterns attested in these dialects, the study aims to contribute to the area of Arabic phonology in general and to research on the typology of Arabic dialects in particular. In addition to the analyses proposed, its substantial contribution in this regard is a significant body of original data that is being analysed for the first time. With respect to dialects of Sudanese Arabic, the study represents a new direction of enquiry, one that seeks to disentangle their respective grammars and reveal the interesting ways in which they pattern alike and diverge.

The aim of the thesis was to design an analytical model enabling a comparative analysis of both original and dubbed versions of film dialogues, with special regard to prosodic interference (intonation in particular), to describe and explain such interference, caused by certain differences between Czech and English, and to assess its influence on communication, considering the nature of a film character and its reception by Czech recipients. The analysis showed that higher pitch register and extended intonation range were the most common types of interference, bringing about the impression of over-emotive and over-melodious speech and also changing some of the film characters. These types of interference were caused by a different way of using intonation within the system of a language; English uses intonation to signal information structure and to express emotions as well. Interesting results were obtained when a structural approach to a character, as proposed by Jiří Levý (1971), was applied in the analysis. Surprisingly, another type of interference was discovered; it is a sort "indirect" interference developed in cases when the dubbed version closely follows the original and its dominant prosodic features and uses them in situations where the original does not. Such interference is changing the...

Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2015. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Please refer to full text for abstract.

published_or_final_version / Linguistics / Master / Master of Philosophy

The focus of this study was to explore how prosodic position and word type affect the phonetic structure and resulting perceptual identification of Korean stops and fricatives. When there is less contextual information, speakers tend to produce clearer speech. For example, consonants at the beginning of prosodic domains, such as syllables, words or phrases, are known to be more clearly articulated and distinguishable than later-occurring consonants. However, it is not yet clear whether the prosodically conditioned realizations of a segment are perceptually distinctive in continuous speech. In addition, there are few studies examining whether the properties of prosodic domain-initial segments are affected by the information content of words (real vs. nonsense words). The acoustic properties of stops and fricatives were compared across IP, PP and Wd-initial positions both in real and nonsense words. It was found that segments in the higher prosodic domain-initial positions showed enhanced durational properties compared to the lower prosodic domain-initial positions. However, the enhancing strategies were different among phonation types. Relative to lenis and aspirated stops, and lenis fricatives, tense stops and fricatives showed less consistent variation as a function of prosodic position and word type. In the perception study, the identification error rates and reaction time for same-spliced CVs were compared to those for cross-spliced CVs. Korean listeners identified the same-spliced CVs more accurately and faster than cross-spliced CVs. In addition, the distinctive acoustic properties of each prosodic domain-initial position were perceptually distinguished by Korean listeners. Due to relatively shorter duration and less distinctive contrast, the target CVs extracted from lower prosodic domain-initial positions caused more confusion in the identification of target segments. In conclusion, this study provides the evidence that speakers modulate their speech clarity depending on information content. By enhancing phonetic properties and phonological contrast, speakers tend to provide perceptual cues for prosodic positions with less contextual information. / text

This paper aims to spell out the post-syntactic operations involved in the placement of second-position subject clitics in Alsea, an extinct language of the central Oregon coast. It assumes that the subject clitic is a syntactic head that is moved to a complementizer position in syntax, but is linearized in a post-syntactic morphological component in PF; operations in morphology account for the deviation of the subject clitic from its syntactic output position. Based on Buckley (1994), this paper proposes a two-stage post-syntactic derivation to account for the subject clitic distribution in Alsea: (i) concatenation, in which the subject clitic adjoins to an adjacent head of the same type to satisfy its suffixal requirement, (ii) prosodic readjustment, whereby a clitic whose morphological host is non-overt, leans rightward to procliticize to the first prosodic constituent.