Home > Research > Publications & Outputs > Units and constituency in prosodic analysis

Electronic data

  • prosody_ms_fincor

    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

    Accepted author manuscript, 143 KB, PDF document

    Available under license: CC BY-NC: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Links

Text available via DOI:

View graph of relations

Units and constituency in prosodic analysis: a quantitative assessment

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published

Standard

Units and constituency in prosodic analysis: a quantitative assessment. / Wilson, Andrew.
In: Journal of Quantitative Linguistics, Vol. 24, No. 2-3, 2017, p. 163-177.

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Harvard

APA

Vancouver

Wilson A. Units and constituency in prosodic analysis: a quantitative assessment. Journal of Quantitative Linguistics. 2017;24(2-3):163-177. Epub 2016 Nov 24. doi: 10.1080/09296174.2016.1260275

Author

Wilson, Andrew. / Units and constituency in prosodic analysis : a quantitative assessment. In: Journal of Quantitative Linguistics. 2017 ; Vol. 24, No. 2-3. pp. 163-177.

Bibtex

@article{4e880f7aba284a93983cf82ea509d34a,
title = "Units and constituency in prosodic analysis: a quantitative assessment",
abstract = "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.",
keywords = "prosody, intonation, constituency, synergetic linguistics, quantitative linguistics",
author = "Andrew Wilson",
note = "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",
year = "2017",
doi = "10.1080/09296174.2016.1260275",
language = "English",
volume = "24",
pages = "163--177",
journal = "Journal of Quantitative Linguistics",
issn = "0929-6174",
publisher = "Routledge",
number = "2-3",

}

RIS

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 -