Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-r7xzm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T08:29:02.351Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - Ending up in Ulster: prosody and turn-taking in English dialects

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 November 2009

Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen
Affiliation:
Universität Konstanz, Germany
Margret Selting
Affiliation:
Universität Potsdam, Germany
Get access

Summary

Introduction

Although great strides have been made recently in the phonetic analysis of prosodic features as a result of technological developments, the advances in phonological analysis have arguably been less impressive, at least with respect to the phonology of intonation systems. This is evident if one considers a traditional concern of phonologists: the comparison of related languages or dialects. A great deal of work has been done on comparative phonology at the segmental level, and a good deal also on comparing lexical tone, stress and accent, yet there is strikingly little published research that systematically compares the intonational systems of related languages, dialects or accents. For example, in John Wells' compendious study of English accents, intonation is given little space (Wells 1982). Cruttenden (1986) notes that, although there have been scattered individual studies of different accents, these have not been used as a basis for systematic comparative work. This is somewhat surprising, given the increasing recognition, within the world of speech technology as well as more traditional applications of linguistics, that prosodic features of intonation are centrally involved in the comprehension of speech and the management of conversational interaction. Surely the ability to handle dialectal prosodic variation will be a sine qua non of a successful speech recognition system, and, one would hope, of an acceptable speech synthesis system too.

This omission is not happenstance, but derives from a general unwillingness on the part of linguists to treat ‘intonation’ with due phonological respect. In particular, there has been a failure to recognize the importance of warranting, from the observable behaviour of naive native speakers, the functional categories that intonational features are held to be exponents of.

Type
Chapter
Information
Prosody in Conversation
Interactional Studies
, pp. 101 - 130
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×