PROSODIC FEATURES IN SPONTANEOUS NARRATIVES Miguel Oliveira, Jr. B.A., Universidade Federal de Pemambuco, 1992 M.A., Universidade Federai de Pernambuco, 1995 THESIS SUBMlTïED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in the Department of Linguistics O Mguel Oliveira, Jr. 2000 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY November 2000 Al1 rights reserved. This work rnay not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without the permission of the author. The author bas granted a non- L'auteur a accord6 une hence non exclusive licence dowing the exclusive permettaat à la Natiod Li'brary of Cdto Biblioth&quenationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distribute or sel1 reproduire, prêter' distriber ou copies of this thesis in microfonn, vendre des copies de cette tûèse sous papa or electronic formats. la forme de microfiche/fih, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique. The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantid extracts îrom it Ni la thése ni des extraits substantiels may be printed or otherwise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. Abstract Any type of discourse consists of spans of utterances (segments) displaying a coherent relationship. Narratives are thought to be composed of clearly recognizable semantically independent segments (or sections). There exist several approaches attempting to describe this underlying grammar (or mode0 of narrative. However, no empirical evidence of such a grammar, using spontaneous, non-elicited data has been presented so far. The present study examines the role prosody plays in the assigning of boundaries in narrative discourse. It also investigates the recurrence of specific prosodic features in semantically individualized narrative sections. if prosody is found to reveal the segmentation of narrative and to characterize narrative sections by means of a recurrent pattern, this constitutes evidence that (oral) narrative presents a well-defined structure. The data consist of 17 spontaneous / non-elicited narrative texts, told in the course of conversations between the researcher and 8 subjects, under appropriate laboratory condition. lnspired by the literature, the following prosodic variables were selected for analysis: pause, speech rate, pitch range, pitch Eset and boundary tones. It was found that the boundaries occuning between narrative sections (narrative bounduies) are prosodically different from those tbat occur exclusively between clauses (clause boundaries). This was verified in temof (i) pause occurrence and duration (pauses occur more frequently and are generaiiy longer at narrative boundaries), (ii) pitch reset values (the difference in pitch range values between two adjacent clauses is higher at narrative boundaries) and (iii) boundary tones (low boundary tones usually occur at narrative boundaries). Further, it was observed that narrative sections are regularly characterized by the recurrence of specifk prosodic patterns. such as (i) variation in speech rate (slower speech rates characterize sections considered highly relevant, faster rates characterize sections of low relevance), and (ii) variation in pitch range (higher pitch ranges characterize sections considered highly relevant, lower pitch ranges characterize sections of low relevance). These findings lead to the conclusion that spontaneously produced narratives are frarned by an underlying stnicture, and that storytellers appear to be awace of such a structure. This awareness is evidenced through the systematic employment of prosodic devices. This thesis was only possible because of the help and support of a number of people. 1would tike to thank everybody who directiy or indirectly contributed to it. Some people deserve speciai mention. Dr. Zita McRobbie, for her inestimable dedication and constructive guidance ail the way through the preparation and writing of this thesis. My colleagues at the Department of Linguistics of Simon Fraser University, for helpful discussion on several technical and theoretical issues. Special thanks to Kyung- Sook Chung, Loma Marie Fadden, Kyoung-Ja Lee, Herman Li, Tara Jeannine McFarlane, Caroline Morgan, Krista Muller, Grisel Garcia Perez, Dr. Wyn Roberts, Connie So, Dr. Juan Sosa, and Jean Wang. The staff at the Department of Linguistics of Simon Fraser University, for their help on several aspects of my stay as a graduate student. Gladys Durksen, Carol Jackson, Sheilagh Mchnald, and Rita Parmar. Dr. Rebecca J. Passonneau, Dr. Ester M. Scarpa, and Dr. Marc Swens, for comments and important suggestions on several aspects of early stages of this research. Dr. Murray Munro and Dr. Nancy Hedberg, for suggestions that have improved the final version of this thesis. Al1 the Brazilian friends who participated anonymously as informants of this study. Stella Galindo, Odileiz Santos, Demerval Salviano, Regina Trindade, and Gilbertovaladares, for their technical support as Brazilian intonation experts. Reinilda Freire, Damih Keller, Ana Lkia Keller, Verônica Oliveira, Grap Salgueiro, Tininha Salgueiro, and Roberto Souza, for acting as iraineci labellers. Marcos Bagno and Manoel Corrêa, for their help as discourse aaaiysis experts. Loma Marie Fadden, for her invaluable help as editor. Tara Jeannine McFarlane, for revising my English. Simon Fraser University, the Department of Linguistics, and the Donor of the Dr. Tai Whan Kim Mernorial Graduate Scholarship in Laquage and Linguistics, for financial support that helped me CO conclude this work. My parents, for al1 the encouragement 1 have received throughout my life. My sisters and brother, for their indispensable support. Verônica and Lucas, for their love. vii Table of Contents Titie Page i .. Approval Page II Abstract iii Acknow ledgments v Table of Contents vii List of Tables xi List of Figures xiii 1.0 General Introduction 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Narrative Analysis 1.2.1 De finition of narrative 1.2.2 Narrative structure 1.2.3 Evaluation: Narrative expressivity 1.3 Prosody 1.3.1 The intonation unit 1.3.2 The prosodic features 1.3.2.1 Duntion 1.3.2.2 Pitch 1.3.2.3 Loudness 1.4 Research Goals 1.4.1 Hypotheses concemhg narrative boundaries 1.4.2 Hypotheses conceniing narrative sections 1.4.3 Justification of the resemh 1.5 The data 1.5.1 Why "spontaneous" and "non-elicited"? 1S.2 Data collection 1S.3 Description of the data vüi 1.5.4 The preparation of the mateRa1 1.6 The outline of the study 2.0 Pause 2.1 introduction 2.1.1 The development of pausological research: a brief overview 2.1.2 Pause as a segmentation due 2.2 Methodological issues in the study of pause in speech 2.3 The distribution of pauses in the data 2.4 Pause occurrence as a demarcator of intonation units 2.5 Pause occurrence as a narrative boundary predictor 2.6 Pause duration as a narrative boundary signal 2.7 Non-boundary pauses 2.8 Stylistic or semantic pauses 2.9 Acoustic correlates of pause 2.10 Pausing in narrative sections 2.1 1 The cognitive rhythm 2.12 General discussion and conclusions 3.0 Speech Rate 3.1 Introduction 3.1.1 Early studies on speech rate: a brkf general ovewiew 3.1.2 Speech rate as a segmentation cue in narrative texts 3.2 Methodological issues in the study of speech rate 3.2.1 Multidetermination 3.2.2 Units of measurements 3.2.3 Speech rate versus articulation rate 3.3 Speech rate in the data: an overview 3.3.1 General charackristics of the narratives 3.3.2 Genetal charaCieristics of the participants 3.4 Speech rate cycle 3.5 Speech rate reset 3.6 Speech rate as a representation of narrative section 3.7 Speech rate as an evaluative device 3.8 Acoustic correlates of speech rate 3.9 General discussion and conclusions 4.0 Pitch 4.1 introduction 4.1.1 The study of pitch phenomena in discoutse: a bief overview 4.1.2 Pitch and discourse structure 4.1.3 Pitch in narrative discourse 4.2 Methodological issues in the study of pitch phenomena 4.2.1. Some variables that cm affect fundamental frequency values 4.2.2. Pitch range, pitch met and boundary tone: measuring procedures 4.3. Pitch in the data: an overview 4.3.1. Generai characteristics of the narratives 4.3.2 General charactenstics of the participants 4.4 Pitc h cycle 4.5 Pitch range in narrative sections 4.6 Pitch reset as a cue for narrative segmentation 4.7 Boundary tone as a cue for narrative segmentation 4.8 Acoustic correlates of pitch phenomena 4.9 Gened discussion and conclusions 5.0 General Discussion and Conclusions 5. 1 Introduction 5.2 Prosoàic features as cues for narrative structure 5.2.1 Prosodic features on the local level: marking narrative boundaries 5.2.2 Prosadic features on the global bel:characterizing narrative 228 sections 5.3 Limitations. contributions and future directions 233 References 24 1 List of Tables Table 1.1 List of participants in the project, with information on their gender, age and the region of origin (in Brazil) Table 1.2 List of possible topics to be developed by the participmfs during the spontaneous interview Table 1.3 Overview of the dam, as a function of the participants in the project: number of narratives and the corresponding total duration (in seconds) and total number or words unered by each participant Table 1.4 Overview of some characteristics of the narratives in the data: total duration of narratives (in seconds), total number of words. major topic iissociated with the story and number of the participant who told the story Table 2.1 Distribution of pause and speech parts: tohl duration of each narrative. total duration of speech and pause parts. and pause ratio, broken down for narratives and mean values over narratives. The duration values are expressed in seconds.