Multiple-methods approaches to discourse topic structure

众所周知，人们在谈话中不仅通过词汇的选择来传达意思，而且还通过韵律的使用来传达意思：音调、响度和其他声音特征的变化可以产生不同的意义，甚至传达与单词本身相反的意思。目前关于韵律如何促进和/或在对话中传达意义的研究受到不同方法之间的分裂的影响。实验音韵学研究已经确定了音调（即语调）和其他韵律特征在语言中一致使用的常见结构模式，并试图描述这些模式如何映射到一致的意义阴影，尽管它们出现在不同的词汇环境中。心理语言学研究调查了韵律的变化是如何影响听者对所听内容的理解的。从会话分析(CA)/语音互动的角度进行的研究已经定性详细地描述了韵律变化在类似的会话功能中是如何保持一致的，同样是在不同的内容中。然而，这些不同的研究视角往往是相互独立的。值得注意的是，语音互动研究往往忽视语音和心理语言学研究中明显的定量方面，以及语调音系所提供的潜在抽象结构的归因，而语音和心理语言学研究往往忽视丰富的会话语境对他们所观察到的变化的影响。作为我博士研究的一部分，我研究了韵律变化在口语中信号主题变化中的作用，将语音学、语调音韵学和心理语言学的方法结合在一起。我已经开始通过参加各种国内和国际会议来交流这项研究，我最近提交了一份期刊出版物，报告了其中的一些结果。有了这个奖学金，我打算继续这种跨学科的方法，把我以前的实验发现和详细的定性方法结合在一起，用在CA/语音交流中。在奖学金期间，我想在CA技术方面得到进一步的培训，并将其应用到我的博士研究中。首先，我打算将我关于话题变化的受控语音产生实验的发现与CA关于类似交互功能的发现进行比较，以确定语调-语音理论与CA之间有用的联系点。其次，我计划在博士研究期间对更多受控数据进行实验之后，进行一项将心理语言学方法与会话数据相结合的感知实验。我的研究与语调语音学和音韵学、心理语言学和CA领域的研究人员特别相关，通过为所有这些群体感兴趣的主题提供跨学科的方法。使用多种方法来研究韵律变化提供了一个独特的机会，可以促进我们对这些现象在各种语言语境中的使用的理解，并将历史上相互孤立的方法结合在一起。说话者和听者在对话中分享意义的方式这个更广泛的问题，可能也会引起任何对认知、人类行为和互动以及一般交流感兴趣的人的兴趣。我在奖学金期间的重点是：(1)通过扩展我在CA领域的知识，继续我的跨学科方法来研究韵律在传播中的作用，(2)通过出版物和会议来传播我的博士研究成果，(3)写一份大规模的资助来支持进一步的研究。

It is well known that people convey meaning in conversation not only with their choice of words, but also with the use of prosody: variations in pitch, loudness, and other characteristics of the sounds which can create different shades of meaning or even convey the opposite of what the words alone might suggest.Current research on how prosody contributes to and/or conveys meaning in conversation suffers from fragmentation between approaches. Research in experimental phonology has identified common structural patterns for the ways pitch (i.e. intonation) and other prosodic characteristics are consistently used within languages, with an attempt to describe how these patterns map to consistent shades of meaning despite the varying lexical context in which they appear. Psycholinguistic studies have investigated the ways in which variations in prosody affect how listeners understand what they hear on a moment-to-moment basis. Studies in the perspective of Conversation Analysis (CA)/Phonetics of Talk-in-Interaction have described in great qualitative detail the ways in which prosodic variation is consistent across similar conversational functions, again with different content. However, these different research perspectives often operate independently of one another. Notably, phonetics-in-interaction research tends to neglect the quantitative aspect apparent in phonetic and psycholinguistic investigations and the attribution of an underlying abstract structure provided by intonational phonology, while phonological and psycholinguistic investigations often ignore the effects of a rich conversational context on the variation they observe.Experiments carried out as part of my doctoral studies have investigated the role of prosodic variation in signalling topic change in spoken language, bringing together methods from phonetics, intonational phonology, and psycholinguistics. I have already begun communicating this research through participation in a variety of national and international conferences, and I have recently submitted a journal publication reporting some of these results.With this fellowship, I intend to continue this interdisciplinary approach, bringing together my previous experimental findings with the detailed qualitative approach used in CA/Phonetics of Talk-in-Interaction. During the fellowship year, I would like to gain further training in CA techniques and apply them to my doctoral research. First, I intend to compare the findings of my controlled phonetic production experiment on topic change to the CA findings on similar interactional functions, in order to identify useful points of contact between intonation-phonological theory and CA. Second, I plan to pilot a perceptual experiment combining psycholinguistic methods with conversational data, following up an experiment conducted on more controlled data during my PhD research.My research is of particular relevance to researchers working in the fields of intonational phonetics and phonology, psycholinguistics, and CA, by providing an interdisciplinary approach to a subject of interest to all of these groups. The use of multiple methods to investigate prosodic variation provides a unique opportunity to advance our understanding of the use of these phenomena in a variety of linguistic contexts and to bring together approaches which have historically been somewhat isolated from one another. The wider question of the means by which speakers and listeners share meaning in conversation may also interest anyone curious about cognition, human behaviour and interaction, and communication in general. My priorities for the period of the fellowship are as follows: (1) to continue my interdisciplinary approach to the role of prosody in communication by expanding my knowledge in the field of CA, (2) to disseminate the results of my doctoral research through publications and conference attendance, and (3) to write a large-scale grant to support further research.