Prosodic organization and uses of comma: pauses and intonation contours in focus

• Grant number: 14/24778-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: March 01, 2015
• End date: September 01, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics - Linguistic Theory and Analysis
• Agreement: Coordination of Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES)
• Principal Investigator: Luciani Ester Tenani
• Grantee: Geovana Carina Neris Soncin Santos
• Host Institution: Instituto de Biociências, Letras e Ciências Exatas (IBILCE). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de São José do Rio Preto. São José do Rio Preto , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 17/12453-0 - Prosodic boundary perception in Brazilian Portuguese: phonetic cue investigation, BE.EP.PD

Abstract

This research project aims to investigate (i) the relation between the production and the auditory perception of prosodic phenomena in non-final intonational phrases of Brazilian Portuguese and, specially, (ii) how the perception of these phenomena defines the use of comma in writing. With two experiments, this research will test the auditory perception of pauses and intonation contours in sentences that, although have the same segmental sequence, are different because of their prosodic organization and because of the use of comma in writing. From of the results found, it is expected to evaluate the perceptual relevance of the investigated prosodic phenomena for promoting a theoretical discussion, based on the phonetics and phonology concepts, about how the prosody constitutes the act of using commas. (AU)