Joint investigation of melodic and durational aspects in the realization of (non) terminality and narrow informational focus

• Grant number: 24/04462-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Effective date (Start): September 01, 2024
• Effective date (End): April 30, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics
• Principal Investigator: Plinio Almeida Barbosa
• Grantee: Samuel dos Santos Sprogis
• Host Institution: Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem (IEL). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Here we propose an investigation of the interaction between the durational and melodic domains in the prosodic realization of terminal and non-terminal boundaries, and narrow informational focus, in a corpus composed of recordings of informal interviews with 5 men and 5 women, native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese. Participants will be recruited to listen to the recordings and indicate terminal and non-terminal prosodic boundaries and words that they perceive as focused, so that, later, the coincidence of responses may be used to indicate the passages in which these communicative functions occur. In these passages, the relationship between melodic and durational aspects will be investigated through the analysis of the temporal distance between melodic peaks and the onset of stressed vowels of focused and pre-boundary words, and through the statistical techniques of autocorrelation and cross-correlation. The results will allow us to understand the relationship between different prosodic domains in the expression of the functions of (non) terminality and prominence (focus). This research will also contribute with possible methods for analyzing this interaction.