UC Berkeley Dissertations, Department of Linguistics Title Stress and Salience in English: Theory and Practice Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9j46482j Author Thompson, Henry Publication Date 1980 eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California S tress and Salience in English: Theory and P ractice By Henry Swift Thompson A.B. (University of California) 1972 M.S. (University of California) 1974 M.A. (University of California) 1977 DISSERTATION Submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in Linguistics in the GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY Approved: DOCTORAL DEGREE CONFERRED JUNE 14,1980 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Table of Contents 0 Introduction ..............................................................................................................................1 0.1 The motivation for the inquiry - variation inthe form of ex p ressio n ...........................1 0.1.1 Realistic/functional approaches to g ram m ar .........................................................................1 0.1.2 Syntax above the sentence ........................................................................................................3 0.1.3 Models of linguistic processing ...............................................................................................5 0.2 The problem of p r o s o d y ........................................................................................................6 0.2.1 Live data makes prosody an i s s u e ......................................................................................6 0.2.2 The problem of stress and s a lie n c e ......................................................................................8 0.3 Tilings to c o m e ......................................................................................................................... 9 1 Prosody: An introduction to the terminology and the problem s ................................. 10 1.1 Prosodic phenomena and terminology ................................................................................10 1.1.1 Prosody i t s e l f ............................................................................................................................ 10 1.1.2 Organizational/temporal and calegorial/lonal...................................................................12 1.1.2.1 Organizational/temporal .......................................................................................................... 13 1.1.2.1.1 The lone g r o u....................................................................................................................... p 13 1.1.2.1.2 The information u n............................................................................................................... i t 14 1.1.2.1.3 The f o o t.....................................................................................................................................14 1.1.2.1.4 The relation of foot to tone group, and n o t a t i o n ..........................................................17 1.1.2.1.5 Isochroniciiy and stress l i m i n g............................................................................................. 19 1.1.2.2 C ategorial/tonal ........................................................................................................................19 1.1.2.2.1 Envelope, boundary tones, kinetic tone: the inlonational w ord........................................20 1.1.2.2.2 Tonal excursion and highlighting.........................................................................................22 1.1.2.2.3 N o ta tio n ......................................................................................................... 23 1.2 Questions and answers .......................................................................................................... 24 1.2.1 Getting at ‘the fact of the matter’: Transcription m ethodology ................................... 24 1.2.2 Acoustic correlates of prosodic p h en o m e n a .......................................................................26 1.2.3 What’s it all about, anyw ay? ................................................................................................. 26 2 The transcription experim ent .................................................................................................29 2.1 M e t h o d ...............................................................................................................................29 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. 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T a b le o f C on t en ts 2.1.1 S u b je c ts .......................................................................................................................................29 2.1.2 M aterials.......................................................................................................................................29 2.1.3 P r o c e d u r e .................................................................................................................................. 34 2.2 Results and d is c u s s io n ............................................................................................................ 39 2.2.1 Foot boundary assignm ent ........................................................................................................41 2.2.2 Foot boundary uncertainty ....................................................................................................53 2.2.3 Tone group boundary assignm ent .......................................................................................... 54 2.2.4 Kinetic tone location and id en tifica tio n ..............................................................................64 2.2.5 Tonal excursion location and identification .........................................................................75 2.2.6 Intonational uncertainty ............................................................................................................ 80 2.3 General discussion .....................................................................................................................80 3 Objective properties of feet: The duration of sy lla b le s .....................................................83 3.1 Temporal aspects of the data segm ent ..................................................................................83 3.2 Moments of the syllable durations grouped by s i tu a t io n ...............................................93 3.3 A higher level of structure over the situational g r o u p s ...................................................97 3.3.1 Informal presentation .................................................................................................................97 3.3.2 Statistical s u p p o r t ................................................................................................................... 100 3.3.2.1 Linear regression ................................................................................................................... 100 3.3.2.2 Analysis o f variance, N e w m an -K eu ls ................................................................................103 3.3.3 Whole foot du ratio n s ...............................................................................................................108 3.3.4 L eftovers .....................................................................................................................................110 3.4 C onclusions ................................................................................................................................ 112 4 The relation of stress and foot structure: A production m o d e l ......................................113 4.1 The problem and what has been said about i t ................................................................ 113 4.1.1 The simple h y p o th e s is .......................................................................................................... 113 4.1.2 The Rhythm R u l e ................................................................................................................... 114 4.1.3 The pressure towards a lte rn a tio n .........................................................................................115 4.1.4 Interaction with highlighting ..................................................................................................116 4.1.5 Interaction with p a u s e s ...........................................................................................................117 4.1.6 Other in te ra c tio n s ...................................................................................................................117 4.2 Modeling the production process - where die footmakcr comes i n ............................... 119 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Str ess a n d Sa lien c e in En g l is h : T heo ry a n d Pr a c tic e iii 4.2.1 The nature of process models: Taking the left to right constraint seriously . 119 4.2.2 What comes before: Framing, coding and g ra m m a r ......................................................122 4.2.3 Input and output characteristics of the fo o tm a k e r ...........................................................124