Prosodic Representation of Information Structure in the Narrative Discourse of the Monolingual Persian-speaking Adults

Authors
S. raghibdoust 1
G. G. 1
E. kamari 2
1 Associate Professor of Linguistics – Allame Tabatabaei University-Tehran –Iran
2 Ph.D. Candidate in General Linguistics - Allame Tabatabaei University-Tehran –Iran
Abstract
Research showed that in some languages, speakers accent new referents and deaccent given referents. The research also indicated that the pitch accent type used to mark accessible referents is like that used to accent given referents. The goal of the present study was to investigate the different pitch accent patterns used to mark different information status (new, given, accessible and identifiable) in the narrative discourse of the monolingual Persian- speaking adults. Moreover, since no research has been done on the intonational patterns of accessible and identifiable referents in Persian, pitch accent and intonational pattern of these referents were also investigated. To these aims, 10 monolingual Persian-speaking adults were encouraged to narrate stories based on 8 picture stories in which information status of referents were carefully controlled. The stories were labeled to determine whether they included target words, full NP, pronouns. The subjects’ pitch accent patterns were identified using Praat software. Findings of the study revealed that the most frequent accent types used to mark new, given and accessible referents were L+(H*) H+(L*) and H*+L respectively. It was also found out that there was no specific accent type to mark identifiable referents in Persian. Based on the results, it could be suggested that there was a specific relationship between information status and pitch accent types in the subjects’ narrative discourse.

Keywords

Subjects

• Eslami, M. (2000). The prosody of the Persian language and it's application in computer-aided speech recognition. Phd Dissertation.Tehran University. [In Persain].
• Eslami, M. (2005). Phonology: Analysis of Persian Intonation. Tehran: SAMT Press. [In Persain].
• Arnold, J. E. & Z. M. Griffin (2007). The effect of additional characters on choice of referring expressions: everyone counts. Journal of Memory and Language 56(4). Pp: 521–36.
• Baumann, S. (2006). The Intonation of Givenness- Evidence from German (Vol. 508]. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
• Baumann, S. & M. Grice (2006). “The intonation of accessibility”. Journal of Pragmatics. 38. Pp: 1636-1657.
• Brown, G. (1983). “Prosodic structure and the given/new distinction”. In A. Cutler & D. R. Ladd (eds), Prosody: models and measurements. Pp: 67–77. Berlin: Springer.
• Chafe, W. L. (1974). “Language and consciousness”. Language. 50.Pp: 111–33.
• Chafe, W. L. (1987). “Cognitive constraints on information flow”. In R. Tomlin (Ed.), Coherence and Grounding in Discourse (Pp: 21-51). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
• Chafe, W. L. (1994). Discourse, Consciousness and Time. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press.
• Chen, A.; E. Den Os & J.P. De Ruiter (2007). “Pitch accent type matters for online processing of information status: Evidence from natural and synthetic speech”. Linguistic Review 23(2/3). Pp: 317–44.
• de Ruiter, L. (2010). Studies on Intonation and Information Structure in Child and Adult German. Phd Dissertation, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen.
• Fillmore, C. (1982). “Frame Semantics”. In L. S. o. Korea (Ed.), Linguistics in the Morning Calm (Pp: 111-138). Hanshin.
• Lambrecht, K. (1994). Information Structure and Sentence Form. Cambridge/ New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Lambrecht, K. (1996). Information Structure and Sentence Form, Cambridge University Press.
• Pierrehumbert, J.B. & J. Hirschberg (1990). “The meaning of intonational contours in the interpretation of discourse”. In P. R. Cohen, J. Morgan & M. E. Pollack (eds), Intentions in communication. Pp: 271–311. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Prince, E. F. (1981). “Toward a taxonomy of given–new information”. In P. Cole (ed.), Radical pragmatics.Pp: 223–56. New York: Academic Press.
• Sadat Tehrani, N. (2007). “The intonational Grammer of Persian”, PhD Dissertation, University of Manitoba.
• Terken, J.M.B. (1984). “The distribution of pitch accents in instructions as a function of discourse structure”. Language and Speech 27(3). Pp: 269–89.
• Yule, G. (1981). “New, current and displaced entitiy reference”. Lingua. 55. Pp: 41­52.
Language Related Research
Volume 10, Issue 1 - Serial Number 49
March and April 2019
Pages 171-193