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I S S U E N O . 51 [
May 2 0 1 1]
Dagmar
Barth-Weingarten
The fuzziness of intonation
units: Some theoretical considerations and a practical solution
Talk-in-interaction
is structured according to various dimensions. One of them is prosody and
the concept of 'intonation unit' has been widely used to capture prosodic
structuring. When looking at prosodic chunking in detail, however,
transcribers and analysts alike face the problem that, in a considerable
number of cases, intonation units do not seem to do justice to language
reality, or our perception thereof. This paper adopts earlier suggestions
that it may be more helpful to analyze the prosodic-phonetic structuring of
talk in terms of what separates the 'units', namely the unit boundaries, or
'cesuras' in talk. In addition, it argues that also weak cesuras should be
notated to allow us to adequately reflect the complexity of
prosodic-phonetic structuring of talk for notating and analytic purposes. To
enable this, notation conventions of various degrees of granularity are
suggested. All of this can serve as a basis for investigating the interface
of prosodic structuring with other language-organizational dimensions, such
as syntax, and the accomplishment of actions.
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