Rights statement: This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of Quantitative Linguistics on 24/11/2016, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/09296174.2016.1260275
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Final published version
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Units and constituency in prosodic analysis
T2 - a quantitative assessment
AU - Wilson, Andrew
N1 - This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of Quantitative Linguistics on 24/11/2016, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/09296174.2016.1260275
PY - 2017
Y1 - 2017
N2 - Drawing on methods from quantitative linguistics, this paper tests the hypothesis that the intonation unit is a valid language construct whose immediate constituent is the foot (and whose own immediate constituent is the syllable). If the hypothesis is true, then the lengths of intonation units, measured in feet, should abide by a regular and parsimonious discrete probability distribution, and the immediate constituency relationship between feet and intonation units should be further demonstrable by successfully fitting the Menzerath-Altmann equation with a negative exponent. However, out of sixteen texts from the Aix-MARSEC database, only six share a common probability distribution and only eight exhibit a tolerable fit of the Menzerath-Altmann equation. A failure rate of ≥ 50% in both cases casts doubt on the validity of the hypothesis.
AB - Drawing on methods from quantitative linguistics, this paper tests the hypothesis that the intonation unit is a valid language construct whose immediate constituent is the foot (and whose own immediate constituent is the syllable). If the hypothesis is true, then the lengths of intonation units, measured in feet, should abide by a regular and parsimonious discrete probability distribution, and the immediate constituency relationship between feet and intonation units should be further demonstrable by successfully fitting the Menzerath-Altmann equation with a negative exponent. However, out of sixteen texts from the Aix-MARSEC database, only six share a common probability distribution and only eight exhibit a tolerable fit of the Menzerath-Altmann equation. A failure rate of ≥ 50% in both cases casts doubt on the validity of the hypothesis.
KW - prosody
KW - intonation
KW - constituency
KW - synergetic linguistics
KW - quantitative linguistics
U2 - 10.1080/09296174.2016.1260275
DO - 10.1080/09296174.2016.1260275
M3 - Journal article
VL - 24
SP - 163
EP - 177
JO - Journal of Quantitative Linguistics
JF - Journal of Quantitative Linguistics
SN - 0929-6174
IS - 2-3
ER -