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In Search of Basic Units of Spoken Language: A corpus-driven approach
Edited by Shlomo Izre'el, Heliana Mello, Alessandro Panunzi and Tommaso Raso
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 94] 2020
► pp. 107–126

Chapter 3
Prosody and the organization of information in Central Pomo, a California indigenous language

| University of California, Santa Barbara

In some theoretical frameworks, it is assumed that prosodic structure is a direct reflection of syntactic structure. Close examination of unscripted speech confirms that though the two often work in concert, they are distinct. Prosodic structure differs from grammatical structure in some fundamental ways. Prosody (pitch, intensity, rhythm) involves continua and can be more responsive to certain subtle differences in cognitive state, discourse context, and interactive goals. Grammar (morphology and syntax) can mark more distinctions, but these are categorical and conventionalized: an affix is either present or absent; one constituent either precedes or follows another. Here some prosodic structures, their functions, and their relation to grammatical structures are discussed with examples from Central Pomo, a language indigenous to Northern California.

Keywords: intonation unit, prosodic sentence, Central Pomo, topicalization, clause combining
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Intonation Units and the packaging of information
  • 3.Sentence boundaries
  • 4.Subjects, objects, and topicalization
  • 5.Clause linking
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 18 June 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.94.03mit
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Cited by

Cited by 1 other publications

Bossaglia, Giulia, Heliana Mello & Tommaso Raso
2020. Chapter 7. Illocution as a unit of reference for spontaneous speech. In In Search of Basic Units of Spoken Language [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 94], ► pp. 221 ff. DOI logo

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