'It's Five O'Clock' – Microprosody and Enunciation

15 Pages Posted: 18 Feb 2015

See all articles by Per Aage Brandt

Per Aage Brandt

Case Western Reserve University - Department of Cognitive Science

Austin Bennett

Case Western Reserve University - Department of Cognitive Science

Date Written: February 17, 2015

Abstract

Based on an enunciation-mode system previously found in the semantics of Romance subjunctives, a hypothesis on crosslinguistic prosodic manifestations of enunciation modes is developed and tested in a pilot project using theater students pronouncing a neutral sentence with enunciational variations prompted by different contexts. The sentence-final syllable pitch profile varied significantly. In our exploratory study, the variation of these profiles corresponded tendentially to the variation of the mode of enunciation (volitive, imaginative, intellective, affective). A semantic pattern of four significant enunciation values may thus have been detected, at least in American English sentence-final microprosody.

Keywords: Enunciation, micro-prosody, mood, syllabic pitch profiles

Suggested Citation

Brandt, Per Aage and Bennett, Austin, 'It's Five O'Clock' – Microprosody and Enunciation (February 17, 2015). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2566228 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2566228

Per Aage Brandt (Contact Author)

Case Western Reserve University - Department of Cognitive Science ( email )

10900 Euclid Avenue
Cleveland, OH 44106-7068
United States
216 368 2725 (Phone)

Austin Bennett

Case Western Reserve University - Department of Cognitive Science ( email )

10900 Euclid Avenue
Cleveland, OH 44106-7068
United States

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