Prenuclear accentual structure in conversational English: Form and function

This research is an investigation of the intonational form and function of multiply accented phrases in conversational English. It is an attempt to understand why intonational phrases often have more than one or two intonationally prominent elements. It is related to other studies of structure and meaning of intonational contours (O'Connor & Arnold 1973, Ladd 1980, Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg 1990), compositionality of intonational contours (Halliday 1967, Ladd 1996), and rhythmic structure of intonation (Bolinger 1986, Shattuck-Hufnagel 1994, Hayes 1995). The nuclear accent and the full intonational phrase contour have been the foci of many previous studies of English intonation; this study examines the placement of prenuclear accents, the intonationally prominent elements that precede the nuclear accent.; The corpus linguistics methodology used in this work provides the framework for phonological and phonetic analyses of approximately 700 multiply accented phrases; they were randomly selected from eight English conversations. Prenuclear accents occur widely throughout discourse; intonational phrases containing at least four words generally have at least one prenuclear accent.; This thesis provides a descriptive and quantitative inventory of prenuclear and nuclear forms. The presence of associations among forms is confirmed (Halliday 1967, O'Connor & Arnold 1973) and described in detail. I also carefully examine accentual rhythmic factors, such as early accent placement and avoidance of clash and lapse. The interaction among these factors and part of speech bear on a word's accentual status. Lastly, this work presents a detailed analysis of two particularly interesting prenuclear patterns: the downstepped prenucleus and the prenuclear plateau. Each of these patterns has a global form that can be associated with certain pragmatic attributes. Theories about the internal structures of these forms must be reconsidered in order to account for the present findings.; My thesis shows that the placement of prenuclear accents is a complex process influenced by many factors, including length of phrase, rhythm, and part of speech. The results of this study can be used to augment traditional approaches to accentual placement. This work is relevant to contemporary research on prosody, discourse and conversation, and speech processing.