Discourse Intonation

The paper advances typical prosodic models of the accentuated personalities’ English public speeches. The inaugural and convention speeches delivered by the American presidents and British prime ministers within the second half of the 20th century served as the material of the study. It was found out that the effective realization of any public speech is determined by the rational choice of linguistic as well as the adequate use of prosodic means for its organization. The authors regard the accentuated language personality as a speaker with enhanced traits of his/her character or temperament which are revealed in the process of his / her communicative activity within the range of acceptable psychological norm and beyond it. It is outlined that in order to conduct the study of prosodic features of the English accentuated personalities’ public speaking the authors created the program and methodology of a complex experimental phonetic research which was carried out in four stages. It i...

These are notes on English stress, rhythm and intonation.

Part A is for students and Part B is for teachers.

The treatment here is “technical”, as by a linguist, but in very plain language. Even with poor formal English, L2 speakers who “sound right” will gain social acceptance, and this in turn will greatly accelerate their learning.

Firstly the concept of “the music of a language” is introduced. It is noted that languages are on a scale of “syllable timed” to “stress timed” (though this is not a simple matter). English is a stress-timed language. Both word stress and sentence stress are essential in English. However, proper word liaison and elision marks native speakers from non-native speakers. Some advice is given on how to practice privately and in a classroom. The importance of teacher talk as a model is noted.

The purpose of this work is primarily informative; handle related studies of spontaneous speech prosody that seem a little known in the world of Hispanic linguistics. We offer a kind of "general state of the art"; we tried thus exposing any conclusions or results of previous empirical work staff, but noted some of the newer ways of inquiry available.
Our perspective understands prosody as a whole suprasegmental phenomena, the most representative of which conversational level (but not only) is the intonation. In this regard, synthetic outlines a framework to clarify what were the different orientations of the studies have resulted in intonation and how conversational approaches.

Диссертационное исследование посвящено анализу того, как в устной речи реализуются сложные синтаксические структуры, привычные лингвистам по изучению нормативного письменного языка, прежде всего — сложноподчиненные конструкции. В центре внимания — взаимодействие синтаксических и просодических факторов, обеспечивающих существование такого рода единиц как сравнительно устойчивого класса и обусловливающих их поведение в устном русском монологическом дискурсе. На материале корпуса «Рассказы о сновидениях» решаются следующие задачи: (1) предлагаются критерии выделения полипредикативных конструкций в устной речи как класса; (2) формулируются принципы деления полипредикативных конструкций на элементарные дискурсивные единицы; (3) анализируется просодическая структура сложноподчиненных конструкций и ряда менее жестких комплексов.

In this essay, I compare and contrast grammatical model of intonation with discourse intonation model. I have selected the former model first because grammar and intonation historically have been considered close and inter-related (Coupler_Kohlen: 1986) and are still popular in countries like Pakistan where teaching of pronunciation is in an early transitional phase. Secondly, grammatical model being one of the earliest approaches to intonation seems to be the base for other approaches to intonation. Finally, ELT textbooks still tend to teach intonation from grammatical dimension, especially in Pakistani language classroom that is already heavily influenced with grammar in other aspects. Keeping in view a good number of discussions on various  approaches to intonation and the limited scope of this paper, this paper confines the discussion only to grammatical and discourse models of intonation. This paper discusses major aspects of both approaches, followed by comparative discussion on their linguistic validity and pedagogical advantages as well as disadvantages.

In this article we try to justify the interest which in recent years has been raising
the investigation of the role of intonation in discourse oral spontaneous, particularly
within the spontaneous colloquial conversation; so, assume a short State of the art
fromthe 1990s, when studying the colloquial began to serve as a focus of interest and,
in the other hand, started to raise the relevance of the prosodic factor in the process
of demarcation and interpretation of linguistic units in conversation. Some models
analysis interested in such matters are reviewed, to finally submit a proposal capable
of dealing with the analysis of the so-called, generically, “conversational intonation”.

Prosody is one aspect of pronunciation that contributes to the naturalness and intelligibility of speech. Regarding the importance of these features, teachers and programmers have tried to use computer software such as Praat to teach to language learners. Praat program can show clearly the aspects of prosody such as stress. It displays some acoustic features that are useful to give self-feedback in language class. English stress can be indicated by one or more of the following: pitch, intensity (loudness) and vowel duration. Thus, this paper explores how to utilize Praat, computer software for phonetic analysis, in training pronunciation skills especially stress for EFL learners. The results showed that Praat could enable learners to refine their word stress. By having direct visual feedback, students were able to actually observe the declination that they might not otherwise notice through listening only. This study also demonstrates that the training from Praat transferred to sound production as the students were able to produce these stress forms more clearly and naturally in a follow up task such as conversation task. Through the results of this study, this paper shows how EFL teachers and students can benefit greatly from this free and readily available open-source educational software. A. Previous studies of Utilizing Praat Software in Teaching Pronunciation Using praat software in teaching prosodic features to EFL learners has been studied by Bahman ,Hayati and Pourkhonic (2013) in Iranian EFL students context. The study is experimental that reveal the effectiveness of computer software (Praat) in helping students to acquire prosodic features of English language. There is a significant difference between the performances of control group and Experimental group. Teaching prosodic features (stress and intonation) in computerized environment and allow them to practice what they have learned with computer, can help them to acquire these features well. Consequently it affects their pronunciation and accent. The results of this study are in line with the outcomes of some of the studies having been done in the domain of teaching prosodic features through the CALL system. Hardison (2003; 2004), for instance, emphasized the importance of using CALL on teaching prosodic

Los hablantes de una misma lengua, dependiendo de su familiaridad
con otras variantes dialectales de su misma lengua, perciben
intuitivamente similitudes y diferencias a nivel fónico, léxico y
morfosintáctico, pero también son capaces de identificar y caracterizar
los aspectos más estereotípicos de la velocidad (duración silábica y
tempo), el volumen (intensidad), el registro de voz (rango de
frecuencia), los patrones melódicos (entonación) o el ritmo. En este
estudio se intenta determinar los factores acústicos que permiten esta
identificación. Sobre todo, el presente trabajo provee las herramientas
necesarias para un análisis sistemático de la lengua oral en el que los
valores absolutos obtenidos por medio de herramientas de análisis
acústico son estandarizados a partir de una base común. Esta
metodología se aplica a un estudio comparativo de los rasgos
prosódicos de las variedades del español de la Ciudad de México y
Madrid, basándose en datos obtenidos del habla espontánea.

Three discourse functions of intonation are identified, and related to the components of the eight nuclear tones recognised by Ladd. As in the Discourse Intonation tradition initiated by Brazil it is recognised that rises and falls indicate the way knowledge is distributed between speaker and listener. To this insight is added the recognition that speaker and listener also express differences or convergences of viewpoint in intonation. This function is indicated by the added fall that makes rise into fall-rise, and low fall into high fall. A third function of indicating a speaker's engagement with either the listener or the topic is signaled by an added rise. Phonetically this makes fall into rise-fall, rise into high rise, and fall-rise into rise-fall-rise. Nuclear tones with the added rise are contrasted with the level nuclear tone, which is neutral in respect of knowledge, viewpoint or engagement. The article goes on to consider the onset of the tone group, showing that tones that can appear at the nuclear position, can also appear with similar discourse functions at the onset or pre-nuclear position.

This research describes some melodic peculiarities of emotional speech based on a conversational corpus in which different emotional values are expressed. As a landmark, we start with 8 basic emotions (joy, confidence, fear, surprise, sadness, displeasure, anger and anticipation-interest) from Plutchik's star (1980), which we have reduced to 5 (joy, sadness, anger, fear and surprise) according to those that have appeared caused by the limitations of the corpus. According to previous research, the selected prosodic features are the contour of the melodic patterns with its final inflection; the register of the contour, that is, its F0 average; the overall intensity of the statement, that is, the average of this throughout the statement; and the speed of speech through the statement (act). From that point on, an acoustic analysis has been carried out and some provisional conclusions are offered.

The prosodic realization of English question tags (QTs) has received some interest in the literature; yet corpus studies on the factors affecting their phrasing and intonational realization are very rare or limited to a certain aspect. This article presents a quantitative corpus study of 370 QTs from the International Corpus of English that were annotated for prosodic phrasing and intonational realization of the QT and the host. Factors tested were polarity, position in the sentence and the turn as well as verb type. Generally, prosodic phrasing and intonational realization were highly correlated: separate QTs were mostly realized with a falling contour, while integrated QTs were mostly rising. Results from regression models showed a strong effect of polarity: QTs with an opposite polarity were more often phrased separately compared to QTs with constant polarity, but the phrasing of opposite polarity QTs was further dependent on whether the QT was negative or positive (more separate...

El objetivo de este estudio es analizar la percepción del acento tonal final H* L- H%1 2 en un grupo de hablantes de español rioplatense. En particular, se investigaron errores en la percepción del tono de frontera alto H% como bajo L% (esto es, interpretación de un acento descendente-ascendente como descendente).
Se utilizaron 3 tests: la observación de errores de producción oral en ejercicios de escucha e imitación, errores en dictados fonéticos y errores en ejercicios de identificación tonal. El tipo de error analizado es la percepción del acento H*L-H% y su categorización errónea como H*L-L% en palabras mono y bi silábicas, su composición segmental (es decir, los fonemas que forman parte de la sílaba y actúan como portadores del acento tonal), y su relación con la frecuencia y distribución de distinción entre H*L-L% y H*L-H% en hablantes nativos de inglés y hablantes de inglés no nativos, cuya L1 es el español rioplatense,  y luego generar una hipótesis base para una posible investigación cuali-cuantitativa de las propiedades prosódicas de la interlengua en aprendices de inglés cuya lengua materna es el español rioplatense. Los resultados en tres tests sugieren una posible correlación entre el número de aciertos y la alineación del tono de frontera H% con respecto a la alineación del tono de frase  L-  y/o su altura tonal, lo cual parece estar determinado al menos en parte, por la composición segmental de las sílabas. El hallazgo más revelador fue que el límite de categorización para los no nativos difería del de los nativos. Dicho de otro modo, los sujetos no nativos comenzaron a percibir  la categoría ‘declarativa’ mucho antes que los nativos. Pareciera entonces que los no nativos poseen un umbral de percepción de H% más alto que el de los nativos, de modo tal que aquellos contornos tonales que presentaban un tono de frontera intermedio entre el H% máximo y el L% mínimo eran percibidos como declarativas por la mayoría de los oyentes no nativos, aún cuando eran claros ejemplos de interrogativas para los nativos.

Se muestran las ventajas de vincular el modelo interactivo de análisis entonativo fonético-funcional (Hidalgo 2011; 2014) con el denominado modelo de Análisis Melódico del Habla (Cantero 2002; Font 2007; Cantero y Font 2007; Cantero y Mateo 2011) en la idea de que esto permitirá contribuir de mejor manera a: precisar la descripción de la versatilidad funcional de la entonación, marcar con la mayor nitidez posible los límites lingüísticos del estudio prosódico y favorecer los avances en el estudio pragmaprosódico de la conversación coloquial, lagunas habituales en la investigación del componente prosódico. A la exhaustividad metodológica del modelo de Análisis Melódico del Habla
se añade una perspectiva globalizadora (interactiva) que asume las diversas posibilidades funcionales de la entonación en el discurso conversacional. Finalmente, se espera proyectar esta propuesta sobre
corpus amplios de lengua hablada y delimitar así su grado de aplicabilidad.

Discourse intonation is claimed to be the central component of communicative competence. Marking information status is a key function of discourse intonation, which contributes to generating coherent discourse, and as such is an important criterion of communicative success (Chun 2002). As a result, extending our knowledge of non-native discourse intonation is an important step towards understanding the features contributing to communicative success. The study focuses on the relationship of spontaneous speech phenomena and information structure. The analysis is carried out on 10 conversations among 10 native and 10 non-native speakers from the Wildcat Corpus of Native-and Foreign-accented English (Van Engen et al. 2010) and includes measurements of sentence length and word-and sentence-level z-score normalized f0 values. The results reveal systematic differences between native and non-native speakers in the occurrence of disfluencies and f0 marking of new information.

Lin, P. M. S. (2010). The phonology of formulaic sequences: A review. In D. Wood (Ed.), Perspectives on formulaic language: Acquisition and communication (pp. 174-193). London: Continuum.


A review of this paper by Professor Alison Wray in The International Journal of Applied Linguistics, vol. 21, issue 1:

"The phonological characteristics of formulaic sequences have, to date, been considerably less researched than other features, so it is refreshing to see Lin’s review article exploring the key findings to date. Not surprisingly, Lin quickly comes up against the problem of circularity that plagues formulaic language research, and handles the issue very appropriately. She notes how some researchers “predict [that] formulaic sequences are phonologically coherent because it is believed that they are stored as holistic units, [while] others . . . infer the holistic storage . . . on the basis of phonological coherence” (p.179). She cuts through the circularity by observing that “phonological coherence is more of a fact because it is measurable [whereas] holistic storage is more of a claim because its existence is inferred based on facts” (p.179). Lin helpfully draws together research into formulaic sequences with the more general research into the phonology of connected speech, and her insightful observations make this paper a particularly strong contribution to the collection."

Topic – focus articulation in Russian has been mainly studied against isolated utterances. In a categorical sentence, this communicative opposition is reflected in the linear-accentual structure. For a simple declarative sentence, that would normally mean that the topic (theme) comes first and has a rising phrasal accent, while the focus (rheme) completes the utterance and is pronounced with a falling accent. At the same time, these formal features do more than just differentiate between topics and foci; they also mark the discourse-semantic category of phase. In syntactically simple utterances, topics tend to correlate with anticipated continuation, hence non-final phase; foci are usually phase-final. As I intend to show in this paper, the non-final phase provides a variety of contexts that challenge the topic – focus distinction. The study is based on the “Stories about presents and skiing” — a collection of prosodically annotated spoken narratives.
In Section 1, I concentrate on issues within a simple clause, where non-final verbal elements often have a fuzzy communicative interpretation. In Section 2, I analyze complex syntactic structures. The data show that non-final clauses may demonstrate both thematic and rhematic properties with regard to their intonation patterns, internal structure and discourse function. Hence, one can claim that some non-final clauses are topics, while others are foci. However, a majority of non-final clauses in the analyzed corpus may not be unambiguously attributed to either of these categories. Section 3 provides a pilot study of complex intonation patterns. Only phase distinction being considered, utterances with more than one accentual phrase may follow either (i) the basic adaptation strategy (comprising of a non-final rising accent and a final falling accent), or, more often, (ii) a complicated strategy: (a) multiple parallel adaption, (b) consecutive adaptation, or (c) parenthetical strategy.

"Lin, P. M. S. (2010). The phonology of formulaic sequences: A review. In D. Wood (Ed.), Perspectives on formulaic language: Acquisition and communication (pp. 174-193). London: Continuum. A review of this paper by Professor Alison Wray in The International Journal of Applied Linguistics, vol. 21, issue 1: "The phonological characteristics of formulaic sequences have, to date, been considerably less researched than other features, so it is refreshing to see Lin’s review article exploring the key findings to date. Not surprisingly, Lin quickly comes up against the problem of circularity that plagues formulaic language research, and handles the issue very appropriately. She notes how some researchers “predict [that] formulaic sequences are phonologically coherent because it is believed that they are stored as holistic units, [while] others . . . infer the holistic storage . . . on the basis of phonological coherence” (p.179). She cuts through the circularity by observing that “phonological coherence is more of a fact because it is measurable [whereas] holistic storage is more of a claim because its existence is inferred based on facts” (p.179). Lin helpfully draws together research into formulaic sequences with the more general research into the phonology of connected speech, and her insightful observations make this paper a particularly strong contribution to the collection.""

With the ever increasing number of studies on formulaic language, we are beginning to learn more about the processing of formulaic language (e.g. Ellis et al. 2008; Siyanova et al. 2011), its use in speech (e.g. Aijmer 1996; Wood 2012) and writing (e.g. Hyland 2008a, 2008b) and its application in natural language processing (e.g. Tschichold 2000). The problem is, however, that we know only very little about the prosody of formulaic language. This article calls for more attention to the prosody of formulaic language in applied linguistics. It is argued that prosody underlies not only the use and the validation of formulaic language, but also its learning and memory. While child first language learners’ learning and memory of formulaic language is prosody-driven, English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) learners cannot benefit from the same mechanism in their learning of formulaic language due to the poverty of spontaneous spoken English input. The lack of opportunity to hear the prosody of formulaic language may partly explain the various difficulties EFL learners have with formulaic language.

La presente investigación estudia las relaciones entre la codificación fónica de un texto leído en voz alta y la comprensión que se establece, en seis aprendientes de ELE  iniciando el nivel de usuario independiente. Se registraron las lecturas de los participantes y se evaluó su prosodia de acuerdo a los patrones tonales del lector nativo competente. La comprensión del texto se midió a través de doce preguntas abiertas. En la primera lectura, se descubre que la codificación fónica se ajusta a la búsqueda de palabras claves que el lector relaciona argumentalmente haciendo uso de estrategias. En la segunda lectura, los índices prosódicos describen mayor relación entre las variables y la prosodia tiene más incidencia como mecanismo de comprensión. También se descubre una estrecha relación entre prosodia y comprensión cuando ésta se mide a través de preguntas que implican uso de inferencias o relación de diferentes ejes temáticos del texto.

Книга посвящена интонации русских предложений, компонентов предложений, связных монологических текстов и диалогических реплик. Интонация рассматривается как средство выражения значений, формирующих предложение и текст, и композиций таких значений. Демонстрируется системность основных значений и средств их выражения. Кроме того, выделяется набор уникальных - словарных - значений, не входящих в композиции с другими. За точку отсчета принимается система, выделенная на материале русского языка. Если в одном языке реконструируется система значений, которые вступают в комбинации друг с другом и имеют системные средства выражения, то в других языках должны действовать сопоставимые системы, как в плане выражения, так и в плане содержания. С этой точки зрения анализируются интонации английского, французского, немецкого, польского и датского языков.

ABSTRACT

With the ever increasing number of studies on formulaic language, we are beginning to learn more about the processing of formulaic language (e.g. Ellis et al. 2008; Siyanova et al. 2011), its use in speech (e.g. Aijmer 1996; Wood 2012) and writing (e.g. Hyland 2008a, 2008b) and its application in natural language processing (e.g. Tschichold 2000). The problem is, however, that we know only very little about the prosody of formulaic language. This article calls for more attention to the prosody of formulaic language in applied linguistics. It is argued that prosody underlies not only the use and the validation of formulaic language, but also its learning and memory. While child first language learners’ learning and memory of formulaic language is prosody-driven, English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) learners cannot benefit from the same mechanism in their learning of formulaic language due to the poverty of spontaneous spoken English input. The lack of opportunity to hear the prosody of formulaic language may partly explain the various difficulties EFL learners have with formulaic language.

The notion of syllable describes not only the essential minimal unit of
spoken continuum but also the smallest “linguistic entity” able to make sense, namely to mean a particular sense which, at a deeper glance, is a
negative entity in the linguistic game of differences. What we aim to show
in this paper is how the theoretical importance of the syllable goes beyond
its phonological range, concerning at the same time the simplest form of
what we call énoncé, which is the sign of sense in context.

Intonation plays an important role in understanding the intended meaning of speech since neglecting the study of intonation in the discourse leads to a misunderstanding of some pragmatic meaning. This study attempts to answer these two questions: what is the pragmatic function of the information tone types that are employed in Obama's speech concerning the termination component? and what are the pragmatic function of the proclaiming and referring tones that are employed in Obama's speech concerning the dominance and non-dominance factor?. It aims to investigate the types of information tones in Obama's speech concerning the termination component and dominance/non-dominance factor based on Brazil's model (1997) of discourse intonation. This study confines itself to the American political interview and it is a qualitative study. The findings show that all the information tone types (proclaiming, referring, and level) are used in Obama's speech and the high termination is most common level, which is used by Obama in his speech in order to emphasize the information and capture the attention of the interviewer. Generally, it was found that the dominance factor was higher than the non-dominance factor, which reflects that Obama took his status as the controller of the discourse during his speech with the interviewer and most of his speech carries contrastive information, which contradicts the interview's expectation. This study is beneficial for foreign learners and those who are specialists in phonology and pragmatics since it can clarify the function of intonation through the interaction of participants in context.

Анализируются основные стратегии интонационного оформления сложноподчиненных конструкций с постпозицией зависимой части. Движения тона в центральных акцентах главной и постпозитивной зависимой клауз могут (1) совпадать, (2) быть противоположными. Кроме того, (3) главная клауза может произноситься безакцентно. Данные устного корпуса со сплошной просодической разметкой позволяют объяснить выбор одной из указанных трех возможностей в реальном дискурсе.

The paper addresses the issue of spoken discourse segmentation. Using the corpus “Stories of presents and skiing”, I explore the concept of Elementary Discourse Unit (EDU) – a chunk of speech flow defined on both prosodic and syntactic grounds. I propose for a new procedure to establish EDUs’ boundaries. Compared to previous studies, a communicative perspective is added. I introduce the notion of communicative prosodic constituent, as well as a typology of those. It is based on three oppositions: (i) topic vs. comment; (ii) completion vs. transitional-continuity; (iii) main line vs. parenthesis. These oppositions are defined independently of one another and provide for a six-fold classification. EDUs’ boundaries are re-defined as a subset of communicative prosodic constituents’ boundaries.

This paper investigates the features of intonation used by Japanese English as a Foreign Language Learners (JEFLLs) in terms of their realisation of illocutionary forces. Recordings of JEFLLs reading dialogues with instructed intentions were analysed and compared with ‘standard’ models from Brazil, Coulthard and Johns (1980) and Roach (2000). The results showed that, overall, JEFLLs used a falling tone irrespective of intention. This could indicate a blanket inability to realise illocutionary force through intonation. However, some tendencies were also apparent in the data. For example, unlike the models, some JEFLLs used rising or level tone to realise the illocutionary force of ‘implication, possibility’, whereas, in line with the models, some JEFLLs used rise–fall tone to realise the illocutionary force of ‘exclamation’. Evidence also showed that the group of high-proficiency subjects used a wider variety of tones than the low group. These results suggest that teaching and learni...

ОБ ИНТОНЕМАХ И ФРАЗЕМАХ В книге Аспекты изучения звучащей речи. Сборник научных статей к юбилею Елены Андреевны БРЫЗГУНОВОЙ. Москва : Изд. Московского университета, Вопросы русского языкознания, выпуск 11, 2004,.ст. 122-129 Благодаря своему учению о фонетике и интонации русской речи Елена Андреевна Брызгунова стала известной во всём мире, в особеннности среди славистов. Во многих странах и на многих языках защищались диссертации на базе очень удачной, очень убедительной и очень привлекательной дескрипции интонационных конструкций (ИК). Что касается учебной практики и создания учебных пособий, то ясность и наглядность предлагаемых схем и правил во многом облегчили и до сих пор облегчают задачу преподавателей и авторов, уж не говоря об учениках и студентах. Мы с Игорем Меркуловым сами включили, например, в свой аудио-визуальный учебник для французов Живой русский язык 1 (DURIN/MERKOULOV 1979) описание главных интонационных конструкций Елены Андреевны, жалея только о том, что во французской преподавательской практике на начальном этапе интонации и упражнениям по интонации посвящается так мало времени. Обстоит ли дело, однако, в других странах иначе ? Может быть, одной из причин этого пренебрежения интонацией является тот факт, что связь между синтаксисом и интонацией продолжает казаться довольно туманной, а то и просто оспаривается или вообще отрицается. На продвинутых этапах письменный вариант речи за редкими исключениями всё больше и больше отталкивает на задний план живую устную практику, несмотря ни на какие языковые лаборатории. Прибегая теперь к компьютерам, обучающиеся этим способом вряд ли участят свои контакты с естественной живой речью. Следовательно, точность описания связей между интонацией и синтаксисом становится всё более необходимой, чтобы ученики и студенты могли понять как следует и без особого труда ту или иную сегментную или супрасегментную структуру. Над этой задачей мы работали всю свою преподавательскую жизнь, но мы всегда оставались, как думается, верным учеником Елены Андреевны. Вот наши результаты, объясняемые, наверное, особенностями сравнения русской грамматики с французской. Определение фраземы и интонемы. В своём преподавании как русской, так и французской интонации мы сохранили названия ИК-1, ИК-2, ИК-3 и т. д., но они у нас указывают лишь на супрасегментную часть, а не на сегментную. Бывают другие точки зрения, когда в понимании "интонационная конструкция" соввмещаются сегментное (слоги, слова...) и супрасегментное (повышения тона, понижения тона...), что представляет определённые плюсы. Но мы экспериментировали другой подход, приведший нас к заключению об удобности раздельной трактовки. Сегментную часть ИК мы называем фраземой, а супрасегментную интонемой, с соответствующими определениями. Слово синтагма имеет очень много разных значений, а слово фразема, по-видимому, свободно. Оно иногда употребляется французами в смысле, близком к смыслу слова phrasillon у Теньера или нашего термина phrase boulée (реактивная фраза-см. ниже). Мы будем употреблять его в этой статье в значении, которое имеет слово синтагма в интонологии. Определение фраземы (=

La voz humana es la música del lenguaje: se modela en las cavidades supraglóticas y se transforma en articulación fonética, onda sonora que atraviesa el aire llegando hasta los oídos de un oyente y permite la comunicación verbal entre individuos. Cada vez que hablamos construimos mensajes destinados a ser entendidos por otros; pero nuestros mensajes no son mera sustancia fónica articulada, sino que además (y de forma evidente) incorporan multitud de variaciones melódicas que modulan cuanto decimos según nuestros intereses comunicativos: (des)integran los elementos discursivos y comunican ideas con sentido, transmiten una intención comunicativa con una determinada fuerza ilocutiva, generan efectos pragmático-contextuales concretos, susceptibles de validación por nuestro/s interlocutor/es (ironía, atenuación, (des)cortesía…), etc.
Algunas de estas capacidades son más “convencionales” o intencionales y otras resultan más “innatas” o inevitables: nuestra prosodia particular impide enmascarar, por ejemplo, nuestra procedencia geográfica, y así el “acento” del español chileno se muestra distinto del español andaluz de Sevilla, pero somos capaces de controlar con precisión el estilete de un descenso tonal cuando hay que marcar el límite entre dos enunciados en una secuencia de habla dada.
Reconocemos, por otro lado, cuándo resulta apropiado intervenir en el marco de una conversación: la prosodia del/de los otro/s suele darnos la pauta para reconocer dicha posibilidad; a veces, incluso, un rasgo suprasegmental promueve la interpretación humorística de una determinada secuencia de habla o favorece, cuando menos, la orientación de dicha interpretación.