Library Catalog

The Intonation of Givenness : Evidence from German /

Baumann, Stefan

The Intonation of Givenness : Evidence from German / Stefan Baumann. - Reprint 2012 - 1 online resource (183 p.) - Linguistische Arbeiten , 508 0344-6727 ; .

Dissertation

i-xi -- Acknowledgements -- Contents -- 1 Introduction -- 2 Theoretical Background -- 3 Corpus Analysis -- 4 Experiments -- 5 A Model of Intonation and Givenness -- 6 Summary and Outlook -- Bibliography -- Lebenslauf

restricted access http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

This book addresses students and researchers of both phonetics and phonology, and the semantics and pragmatics of discourse. It employs an autosegmental-metrical model of intonation to investigate the marking of aspects of information structure, concentrating on the Given-New dimension. It begins with an overview of the state of the art in the areas of intonation and information structure, and, since the term 'Givenness' has been used in the literature in diverging ways, provides a model of 'Givenness proper', focussing on the cognitive states of discourse referents, and how these states are expressed through the choice of words and their prosody. The empirical evidence provided here is based on German. It comprises the analysis of a read corpus and two perception experiments which show that the dichotomy of 'accented' versus 'uncaccented' corresponding to 'New' versus 'Given' information is inadequate. In fact, there is evidence that a range of pitch accent types (including deaccentuation) can be mapped onto the gradient scale of Givenness degrees, with the pitch height on the accented syllable being the determining factor. This book addresses students and researchers of phonetics/phonology, and the semantics and pragmatics of discourse. It employs an autosegmental-metrical model of intonation to investigate the marking of aspects of information structure, concentrating on the Given-New dimension. The empirical evidence provided here is based on German. It shows that the dichotomy of 'accented' versus 'uncaccented' corresponding to 'New' versus 'Given' information is inadequate. In fact, there is evidence that a range of pitch accent types can be mapped onto the gradient scale of Givenness degrees, with the pitch height on the accented syllable being the determining factor.




Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.


In English.

9783484305083 9783110921205

10.1515/9783110921205 doi


Discourse analysis.
German language--Intonation.
Intonation (Phonetics).
Semantics.
LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General.

P222 / .B38 2006eb

197