Intonation: Theory, Models, and Applications Athens, Greece September 18-20, 1997

Macrostructures in Prosody: The Case of Phonecalls

Ellen Douglas-Cowie, R. Cowie

School of English / School of Psychology, Queen's University, Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK

A study of business phone calls provides quantitative evidence suggesting 'intonational settings': certain attributes of intonation are sustained through discourse units, and differentiate one unit from another, as if phonologically significant aspects of intonation are realised within a space controlled by discourse-related parameters. Two types of parameter emerge, one controlling stretch /compression of the F0 contour in frequency space, the other in temporal space.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Douglas-Cowie, Ellen / Cowie, R. (1997): "Macrostructures in prosody: the case of phonecalls", In INT-1997, 103-106.