Prosodic Analysis

The goal of this course is to introduce students to the domain of prosody. We will focus on identifying and describing prosodic patterns by analyzing the phonetic forms of prosodic contours in different languages, as well as their functions in interaction with syntax, discourse, emotions, and attitudes.

Students will learn how to explain the concept of prosody, its forms and its functions. They will be able to quantitatively characterize prosody, and to make a typological description (accents, tones, stress). They will learn how to explain the prosodic characteristics of utterances with a particular accentual or phrase pattern, or to establish links with syntax, discourse, emotions and attitudes. Students will also learn how to read papers on prosody, critically evaluate information and to report it in a clear manner.

On successful completion of this course, students should be able to:

• Describe prosodic (typological) description of a language
• Conduct an acoustic analysis to describe prosodic phenomena and to solve tasks related to prosodic phonology questions: identifying accents, contours, relations between a contour and a syntactic structure or a discourse phenomenon
• Read experimental articles related to prosody and be able to analyze them

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