Cover not available
Part of
The Conversation Frame: Forms and functions of fictive interaction
Edited by Esther Pascual and Sergeiy Sandler
[Human Cognitive Processing 55] 2016
► pp. 215–234

Intonation of fictive vs. actual direct speech in a Brazilian Portuguese corpus

| Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Brazil
| Federal University of São Carlos, Brazil
We deal with prosodic features in constituents structured by the conversation frame, that is, involving fictive interaction (Pascual 2002, 2014). We investigate how prosodic aspects contribute to the recognition of a fictive reading as a non-genuine instance of direct speech in a Brazilian Portuguese spontaneous speech corpus. The construction in question is “(eu) falei + clause” (‘I said’ + clause), which can be interpreted either fictively or factively (Rocha 2006, 2013, 2014). We used PRAAT to analyze recorded examples of this construction. Our results show that instances with a factive reading have greater fundamental frequency (F0) mean, standard deviation, and range than fictive ones. Factive contours are shifted towards higher values by roughly 2 semitones compared to the fictive ones.
Keywords: fictive vs. factive reading, PRAAT, prosody, spontaneous speech
Published online: 1 November 2016
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.55.11roc
References
Arantes, P.
(2015) Time-normalization of fundamental frequency contours: A hands-on tutorial. In A.R. Meireles (Ed.), Courses on Speech Prosody (pp. 98–123). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Ávila, L.B.B.
(2014) Modalidade em perspectiva: Estudo baseado em corpus oral do português brasileiro. PhD dissertation, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais.Google Scholar
(2015) MASS - Modal Annotation in Spontaneous Speech: semantic annotation scheme for modality in a spontaneous speech Brazilian Portuguese corpus. Veredas – Revista de Estudos Linguísticos, 19(2), 1–13.Google Scholar
Boersma, P., & Weenink, D.
(2013) PRAAT: Doing phonetics by computer [Computer program]. Version 5.3.56, Retrieved 15 September 2013 from [URL]Google Scholar
Cohen, J.
(1988) Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences (2nd ed.). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Couper-Kuhlen, E.
(1999) Coherent voicing: On prosody in conversational reported speech. In W. Bublitz, U. Lenk, & E. Ventola (Eds.), Coherence is spoken and written discourse (pp. 11–34). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Coutinho, P.R. do V.
(2014) Tendências prosódicas de discurso reportado em fala espontânea. PhD dissertation. Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora.Google Scholar
Cresti, E.
(2000) Corpus di italiano parlato. Firenze: Accademia della Crusca.Google Scholar
Cresti, E., & Moneglia, M.
(Eds.) (2005) C-ORAL-ROM: integrated reference corpora for spoken romance languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cresti, E., & Scarano, A.
(1998) Sur la notion de parlé spontané. Available at: [URL]. Last access: 11 December 2014.Google Scholar
Dias, C.C.N.
(2008) A igreja como refúgio e a Bíblia como esconderijo: Religião e violência na prisão. São Paulo: Humanitas.Google Scholar
Fauconnier, G.
(1985) Mental spaces: Aspects of meaning construction in natural language. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
(1997) Mappings in thought and language. New York: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goldberg, A.
(1995) Constructions: A construction grammar approach to argument structure. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Jansen, W., Gregory, M.L., & Brenier, J.M.
(2001) Prosodic correlates of directly reported speech: Evidence from conversational speech. Proceedings of the ISCA workshop on prosody in speech recognition and understanding (pp. 77–80). Red Bank, NJ.
Klewitz, G., & Couper-Kuhlen, E.
(1999) Quote – unquote? The role of prosody in the contextualization of reported speech sequences. Pragmatics, 9(4), 459–485. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Langacker, R.W.
(1987) Foundations of cognitive grammar Vol. 1: Theoretical prerequisites. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Luchjenbroers, J.
(2001) Prosodic and gestural cues for navigations around mental space. Proceedings of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 27, 421–434. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Myers, G.
(1999) Unspoken speech: Hypothetical reported speech and the rhetoric of everyday talking. Text, 19(4), 571–590.Google Scholar
Pascual, E.
(2002) Imaginary trialogues: Conceptual blending and fictive interaction in criminal courts. Utrecht: LOT.Google Scholar
(2006) Fictive interaction within the sentence: a communicative type of fictivity in grammar. Cognitive Linguistics, 17(2), 245–267. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pascual, E., Królak, E., & Janssen, Th. A.J.M.
(2013) Direct speech compounds: Evoking socio-cultural scenarios through fictive interaction. Cognitive Linguistics, 24(2), 345–366. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Raso, T., & Mello, H.R.
(2010) The C-ORAL-BRASIL corpus. In M. Moneglia & A. Panunzi (Eds.), Bootstrapping information from corpora in a crosslinguistic perspective (pp. 193–213). Florença: Firenzi University Press.Google Scholar
(2012) C-ORAL-BRASIL 1: Corpus de referência do português brasileiro falado informal. Belo Horizonte: Editora UFMG.Google Scholar
Reesink, G.P.
(1993) ‘Inner speech’ in Papuan languages. Language and Linguistics in Melanesia, 24, 217–225.Google Scholar
Rocha, L.F.M.
(2003) Tendências prosódicas e interacionais do discurso reportado: uma abordagem sociocognitivista. Veredas – Revista de Estudos Linguísticos, 7(1/2), 247–262.Google Scholar
(2004) A construção da mímesis no reality show: Uma abordagem sociocognitivista para o discurso reportado. PhD Dissertation. Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro.Google Scholar
(2006) A fala silenciosa reportada: metáfora, metonímia e mesclagem. Linguística, 2(1), 23–38.Google Scholar
(2012) Autocitação fictiva como escaneamento mental: Mover-se conceptualmente sem se deslocar. Revista da ABRALIN, 11(2), 113–143. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2013) A perspectivação conceptual em autocitação factiva e fictiva. DELTA [online]. 29(2), 311–339. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2014) Autocitação fictiva em português europeu e brasileiro. Alfa: Revista de linguística, 58(1), 63–92. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tannen, D.
(1986) Introducing constructed dialogue in Greek and American conversational and literary narratives. In F. Coulmas (Ed.), Direct and indirect speech (pp. 311–322). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(1988) Hearing voices in conversation, fiction, and mixed genres. In D. Tannen (Ed.), Linguistics in context: Connecting observation and understanding (pp. 98–113). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar
(1989) Talking voices: Repetition, dialogue, and imagery in conversational discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
(1995) Waiting for the mouse: Constructed dialogue in conversation. In D. Tedlock & B. Mannheim (Eds.), The dialogic emergence of culture (pp. 198–217). Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Traunmüller, H., & Eriksson, A.
(1995a) The perceptual evaluation of F0-excursions in speech as evidenced in liveliness estimations. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 97, 1905–1915. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(1995b) The frequency range of the voice fundamental in the speech of male and female adults. Unpublished manuscript. [URL].
Vandelanotte, L.
(2005) From representational to scopal ‘distancing indirect speech or thought’: A cline of subjectification. Text & Talk, 24(4), 547–585.Google Scholar
(2009) Speech and thought representation in English: A cognitive-functional approach. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vries, L.J. de
(1993) Forms and functions in Kombai, an Awyu language of Irian Jaya. Canberra: Australian National University Press.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 1 other publications

Pascual, Esther, Aline Dornelas & Todd Oakley
2017. When “Goal!” means ‘soccer’. Pragmatics & Cognition 24:3 ► pp. 315 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 17 november 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.