tailieunhanh - Báo cáo khoa học: "THE INTONATIONAL STRUCTURING OF DISCOURSE"

We propose a mapping between prosodic phenomena and semantico-pragmatic effects based upon the hypothesis t h a t intonation conveys information about the intentional as well as the attentional s t r u c t u r e of discourse. In particular, we discuss how variations in pitch range and choice of accent and tune can help to convey such information as: discourse segmentation and topic structure, appropriate choice of referent, the distinction between 'given' and 'new' information, conceptual contrast or parallelism between mentioned items, and subordination relationships between propositions salient in the discourse. . | THE INTONATIONAL STRUCTURING OF DISCOURSE Julia Hirschberg and Janet Pierrehumbert AT T Bell Laboratories 600 Mountain Avenue Murray Hill NJ 07974 USA ABSTRACT We propose a mapping between prosodic phenomena and semantico-pragmatic effects based upon the hypothesis that intonation conveys information about the intentional as well as the atten-tional structure of discourse. In particular we discuss how variations in pitch range and choice of accent and tune can help to convey such information as discourse segmentation and topic structure appropriate choice of referent the distinction between given and new information conceptual contrast or parallelism between mentioned items and subordination relationships between propositions salient in the discourse. Our goals for this research are practical as well as theoretical. In particular we are investigating the problem of intonational assignment in synthetic speech. 1. Introduction The role of prosody in discourse has been generally acknowledged but little understood. Linguistic pragmaticists have noted that types of information status such as given new topic comment focus presupposition can be intonationally marked 1 2 3 4 that reference resolution may depend critically on intonation 5 6 that intonation can be used to disambiguate among potentially ambiguous utterances 7 8 and that indirect speech acts may be signalled by intonational means 9 10 11 . Conversational analysis of naturally occurring data has found that speakers may signal topic shift digression and interruption as well as turn-taking intonation-ally 12 13 14 . And the fact that intonational contours contribute in some way to utterance interpretation is itself unexceptionable 8 . To date however identification of the prosodic phenomena involved -- and the proper mapping between these phenomena and their semantico-pragmatic effects has been largely intuitive and the intonational phenomena involved have not been precisely described. Here we describe how .