Production and Comprehension of Spontaneous Japanese and English Dialogue

当两个人进行对话时，他们的大部分信息都是通过语调传达的。即使对话者没有视觉上的共同在场，听众也可以获得大量的信息，除了辅音和元音的口头串，包括节奏、曲调、速度、音量、紧张程度和语调的变化。语调为言语提供了一种组织结构，可以同时传达说话者的态度、说话目的以及特定单词或短语的相对重要性。语调可以标记直接相关信息和背景信息的区别，表达对比、矛盾和纠正；并指出歧义话语的预期语法。语调与说话者/听者对句法和信息结构的意图之间关系的基础研究涉及说话者是否、何时以及如何使用语调信息来表示语言和副语言意义，以及听者是否、如何以及何时使用这些信息来恢复意义。在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，Shari Speer博士和Kiwako Ito博士将探索说话者和听者在英语和日语自发对话中使用语调来交流信息结构的方式。跨语言比较解决的问题是韵律在语法和旋律截然不同的语言中是否具有相同的交际功能。语调的哪些方面对语言理解最重要？这些方面在所有语言中都是通用的吗？讲话者发出某些曲调是为了帮助听众，还是他们主要关注自己对信息的解释？这些问题是由一个更基本的问题引起的：人类对话中语调的普遍性是什么？它如何反映语言使用过程中的认知功能结构？

When two people engage in dialogue, a substantial part of their message is conveyed by its intonation. Even when interlocutors are not visually co-present for conversation, listeners have access to a great deal of information beyond the spoken strings of consonants and vowels, including variation in rhythm, tune, tempo, loudness, tenseness and tone of voice. Intonation provides an organizational structure for speech, and can convey simultaneously a speaker's attitude, utterance purpose, and the relative importance of particular words or phrases. Intonation can mark the difference between immediately relevant vs. background information, express contrast, contradiction, and correction; and indicate the intended syntax of ambiguous utterances. Basic research into the relationship between intonation and speakers/hearers' intentions about syntax and information structure addresses whether, when, and how speakers use intonational information to signal linguistic and paralinguistic meaning as well as whether, how and when listeners use this information to recover meaning.With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Shari Speer and Dr. Kiwako Ito will explore the way speakers and listeners use intonation to communicate information structure in spontaneous dialogues in English and Japanese. The cross-linguistic comparison addresses the question of whether prosody has the same kind of communicative function in languages that are syntactically and melodically very different. What aspects of intonation are most important for language understanding, and are these common across languages? Do speakers pronounce certain tunes because they will be helpful for listeners, or do they focus primarily on their own interpretation of a message? These questions are motivated by a more basic one: What is universal about intonation in human conversation, and how does it reflect the structure of cognitive function during language use?