Tel Aviv University The Lester & Sally Entin Faculty of Humanities The Chaim Rosenberg School of Jewish Studies The SpeeCHain Perspective: Prosody‐Syntax Interface in Spontaneous Spoken Hebrew THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE “DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY” by Vered Silber‐Varod Under the supervision of: Prof. Shlomo Izre'el SUBMITTED TO THE SENATE OF TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY April 2011 Table of Contents Lists ..................................................................................................................................... vi Abstract ............................................................................................................................... 1 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 5 1.1 Overview of the dissertation ................................................................................ 6 2 Prosody ...................................................................................................................... 11 2.1 The Intonation Unit and its boundaries .............................................................. 13 2.2 Annotation systems of prosodic boundary tones – from theory to practice ..... 17 2.3 The communicative value of prosodic boundaries: terminal vs. continuous boundary tones ................................................................................................... 20 2.4 Summary ............................................................................................................. 24 3 Theoretical approaches to the prosody‐syntax interface ......................................... 25 3.1 Prosodic phonology ............................................................................................ 27 3.1.1 Prosodic phonology and Hebrew research ................................................. 30 3.2 Studying prosody independently of syntax ........................................................ 32 3.2.1 Summary ..................................................................................................... 35 3.3 Spontaneous speech as fundamental for the study of language ....................... 36 3.3.1 Planned speech evidence............................................................................ 38 3.3.2 Written language evidence ......................................................................... 39 3.3.3 Evidence from other languages .................................................................. 40 3.3.4 Spontaneous data ....................................................................................... 41 4 Research questions .................................................................................................... 43 5 Corpus ........................................................................................................................ 44 5.1 Transcription conventions .................................................................................. 46 5.1.1 Single transcription file per speaker ........................................................... 46 5.1.2 Phonemic inventory .................................................................................... 46 5.1.3 Clitic – the minimal syntactic unit transcribed ........................................... 49 5.1.3.1 Complex adverbial structures .............................................................. 51 5.1.4 Tokens versus types .................................................................................... 52 5.1.4.1 The F2F database ................................................................................. 53 5.1.4.2 The TEL database ................................................................................. 53 i 6 Prosodic boundary patterns ...................................................................................... 54 6.1 Boundary tones in spontaneous Israeli Hebrew ................................................ 54 6.1.1 T‐boundary tones ........................................................................................ 54 6.1.2 C‐boundary tones ........................................................................................ 54 6.1.3 Perceptual segmentation of IUs ................................................................. 56 6.1.4 Pauses ......................................................................................................... 57 6.1.5 An example of prosodic labeling and initial results .................................... 59 6.1.5.1 F2F annotation data ............................................................................ 60 6.1.5.2 TEL annotation data ............................................................................. 62 6.2 Phonetic realizations of continuous boundary tones ......................................... 63 6.2.1 Continuous Elongation (CE) boundary tones .............................................. 63 6.2.1.1 Term conversion .................................................................................. 64 6.2.1.2 A shift from disfluency to a prosodic pattern ...................................... 65 6.2.1.3 The phonetic realization of the CE boundary tone ............................. 70 6.2.2 Continuous Neutral (CN) boundary tones .................................................. 74 6.2.3 Continuous Rise (CR) boundary tones ........................................................ 75 6.2.4 Continuous Rise‐Fall (CRF) boundary tones ................................................ 76 6.2.5 Continuous Fall (CF) boundary tones .......................................................... 77 6.2.6 Syllable duration in various prosodic environments .................................. 78 7 Methodology .............................................................................................................. 82 7.1 Linear (n‐gram) analysis ...................................................................................... 82 7.2 The C‐boundary domain of analysis ................................................................... 82 7.2.1 Word order in spontaneous spoken Hebrew ............................................. 85 8 Results ........................................................................................................................ 89 8.1 Elements preceding C‐boundaries ...................................................................... 89 8.1.1 Clean‐up ...................................................................................................... 89 8.1.2 Elements preceding C‐boundaries: Findings .............................................. 90 8.2 Elements following C‐boundaries ....................................................................... 95 8.2.1 Clean‐up ...................................................................................................... 95 8.2.2 Elements following C‐boundaries: Findings ................................................ 96 ii 8.3 Dependencies over C‐boundaries ..................................................................... 100 8.3.1 Why examine both sides of the boundary? .............................................. 100 8.3.2 Results of dependencies over C‐boundaries ............................................ 102 8.4 Dependencies per C‐boundary ......................................................................... 106 8.4.1 Dependencies over the CE‐boundary tone ............................................... 106 8.4.2 Dependencies over the CN‐boundary tone .............................................. 107 8.4.3 Dependencies over the CR boundary tone ............................................... 109 8.4.4 Dependencies over the CRF boundary tone ............................................. 111 8.4.5 Dependencies over the CF boundary tone ............................................... 112 8.5 From POS to lexeme analysis – The preceding elements ................................. 112 8.5.1 Group A POS .............................................................................................. 113 8.5.1.1 POSS [Sel] 'of' ..................................................................................... 113 8.5.1.2 DEF [ha] 'the' ..................................................................................... 114 8.5.1.3 PREP‐DEF ........................................................................................... 115 8.5.1.4 SUB [SE] ............................................................................................. 116 8.5.1.5 Prepositions ....................................................................................... 116 8.5.1.6 Conjunctions ...................................................................................... 118 8.5.1.7 Personal pronouns ............................................................................. 121 8.5.1.8 Modifiers ............................................................................................ 124 8.5.1.9 BE ....................................................................................................... 125 8.5.1.10 AUX – Modal lexemes ........................................................................ 127 8.5.1.11 Existentials [jeS] 'there is' and [en] 'there is not' .............................. 127 8.5.1.12 Other POSs ......................................................................................... 129 8.5.2 Group B items ........................................................................................... 131 8.5.2.1 DM – Discourse markers