Communicative Functions and Linguistic Forms in Speech Interaction

320 Pages·2017·13.377 MB·English

by  Klaus J. Kohler

COMMUNICATIVE FUNCTIONS AND
LINGUISTIC FORMS IN SPEECH INTERACTION
Prosody is generally studied at a separate linguistic level from syntax and
semantics. It analyses phonetic properties of utterances such as pitch and
prominence, and orders them into phonological categories such as pitch ac-
cent, boundary tone and metrical grid. The goal is to defi ne distinctive formal
differentiators of meanings in utterances. But what these meanings are is ei-
ther excluded or a secondary concern. This book takes the opposite approach,
asking what are the basic categories of meaning that speakers want to transmit
to listeners? And what formal means do they use to achieve it? It places lin-
guistic form in functions of speech communication, and takes into account all
the formal exponents – sounds, words, syntax, prosodies – for specifi c func-
tional coding. Basic communicative functions such as ‘questioning’ may be
universally assumed, but their coding by linguistic bundles varies between
languages. A comparison of function-form systems in English, German and
Mandarin Chinese shows this formal diversity for universal functions.
klaus j. kohler is Emeritus Professor at the University of Kiel, Germany
and Honorary Professor at Nanjing Normal University, China. He was editor
of Phonetica , the International Journal of Phonetic Science, for thirty-fi ve
years.
CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN LINGUISTICS
General Editors: P. AUSTIN, J. BRESNAN, B. COMRIE,
S. CRAIN, W. DRESSLER, C. J. EWEN, R. LASS,
D. LIGHTFOOT, K. RICE, I. ROBERTS,
S. ROMAINE, N. V. SMITH
In this series
116. GILLIAN CATRIONA RAMCHAND : Verb meaning and the lexicon: a fi rst phase syntax
117. PIETER MUYSKEN : Functional categories
118. JUAN URIAGEREKA : Syntactic anchors: on semantic structuring
119. D . ROBERT LADD : Intonational phonology (second edition)
120. LEONARD H. BABBY : The syntax of argument structure
121. B. ELAN DRESHER : The contrastive hierarchy in phonology
122. DAVID ADGER , DANIEL HARBOUR and LAUREL J. WATKINS : Mirrors and
microparameters: phrase structure beyond free word order
123. N IINA NING ZHANG : Coordination in syntax
124. NEIL SMITH : Acquiring phonology
125. NINA TOPINTZI : Onsets: suprasegmental and prosodic behaviour
126. C EDRIC BOECKX , NORBERT HORNSTEIN and JAIRO NUNES : Control as movement
127. M ICHAEL ISRAEL : The grammar of polarity: pragmatics, sensitivity, and the logic
of scales
128. M . RITA MANZINI and LEONARDO M. SAVOIA : Grammatical categories: variation in
romance languages
129. BARBARA CITKO : Symmetry in syntax: merge, move and labels
130. RACHEL WALKER : Vowel patterns in language
131. MARY DALRYMPLE and IRINA NIKOLAEVA : Objects and information structure
132. JERROLD M. SADOCK : The modular architecture of grammar
133. DUNSTAN BROWN and ANDREW HIPPISLEY : Network morphology: a defaults-based
theory of word structure
134. B ETTELOU LOS , CORRIEN BLOM , GEERT BOOIJ , MARION ELENBAAS and
A NS VAN KEMENADE : Morphosyntactic change: a comparative study of particles
and prefi xes
135. S TEPHEN CRAIN : The emergence of meaning
136. HUBERT HAIDER : Symmetry breaking in syntax
137. JOSÉ A. CAMACHO : Null subjects
138. G REGORY STUMP and RAPHAEL A. FINKEL : Morphological typology: from word to
paradigm
139. B RUCE TESAR : Output-driven phonology: theory and learning
140. ASIER ALCÁZAR and MARIO SALTARELLI : The syntax of imperatives
141. M ISHA BECKER : The acquisition of syntactic structure: animacy and thematic
alignment
142. M ARTINA WILTSCHKO : The universal structure of categories: towards a formal
typology
143. F AHAD RASHED AL-MUTAIRI : The minimalist program: the nature and plausibility of
Chomsky’s biolinguistics
144. CEDRIC BOECKX : Elementary syntactic structures: prospects of a feature-free syntax
145. P HOEVOS PANAGIOTIDIS : Categorial features: a generative theory of word class
categories
146. MARK BAKER : Case: its principles and its parameters
147. WILLIAM BENNETT : The phonology of consonants: dissimilation, harmony and
correspondence
148. A NDREA SIMS : Infl ectional defectiveness
149. GREGORY STUMP : Infl ectional paradigms: content and form at the syntax-morphology
interface
150. R OCHELLE L IEBER : English nouns: the ecology of nominalization
151. JOHN BOWERS : Deriving syntactic relations
152. A NA TERESA PÉREZ-LEROUX , MIHAELA PIRVULESCU and YVES ROBERGE : Direct objects
and language acquisition
153. M ATTHEW BAERMAN , DUNSTAN BROWN and GREVILLE CORBETT : Morphological
complexity
154. M ARCEL DEN DIKKEN : Dependency and directionality
155. LAURIE BAUER : Compounds and compounding
156. K LAUS J. KOHLER : Communicative functions and linguistic forms in speech interaction

Earlier issues not listed are also available
COMMUNICATIVE
FUNCTIONS AND
LINGUISTIC FORMS IN
SPEECH INTERACTION
KLAUS J. KOHLER
University of Kiel, Germany
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education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence.
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107170728
DOI: 10.1017/9781316756782
© Klaus J. Kohler 2018
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2018
Printed in the United Kingdom by TJ International Ltd.
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library .
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data
Names: Kohler, Klaus J., author.
Title: Communicative functions and linguistic forms in speech interaction /
Klaus J. Kohler, University of Kiel, Germany.
Description: New York : Cambridge University Press, 2017. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifi ers: LCCN 2017023080 | ISBN 9781107170728 (alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Versifi cation. | Functional discourse grammar.
Classifi cation: LCC P311.K65 2017 | DDC 415.01/83 – dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017023080
ISBN 978-1-107-17072-8 Hardback
Additional resources for this publication at www.cambridge.org./9781107170728
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy
of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication,
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.
I wish to dedicate this book to my grandson Alexander, who, around
the age of 15 months, started using the syllable sequence [ɁaɁa]
with down-stepping pitch, accompanied by index-fi nger pointing, to
direct his mummy’s attention to something he spotted in his action
fi eld: an example of a pointing call on an elementary articulation
carrier without words, which shows up the fundamental role of
communicative functions besides phonemes, words and sentences in
language acquisition and use .

Contents
Preface page xi
Introduction 1
1 Speech Communication in Human Interaction 18
1.1 Human Interaction and the Organon Model 18
1.2 Deictic and Symbolic Fields in Speech Communication 23
1.3 From Function to Form 29
1.4 Descriptive Modelling of Prosody – An Overview
of Paradigms 46
2 Prosody in a Functional Framework: The Kiel
Intonation Model (KIM) 71
2.1 Prominence 71
2.2 Sentence Accent 78
2.3 Sentence Accents in Syntagmatic Prominence Patterns 82
2.4 Declination, Downstep and Upstep 87
2.5 Lexical Stress 94
2.6 Experiments in Lexical Stress Perception in German 97
2.7 Intonation 102
2.8 Experiments in Peak and Valley Synchronisation 108
2.9 Concatenation of Pitch Patterns 135
2.10 Contour-internal F0 Timing in Falls and Rises 139
2.11 Prehead and Register 144
2.12 Prosodic Phrasing 147
2.13 Microprosody 149
2.14 Stepping Patterns 150
2.15 Time-Windows in Speech Production 155
3 The Representation Function 164
3.1 Syntagmatic Organisation of Statements 166
3.2 Information Selection and Weighting 174
3.3 Argumentation 181
ix