When boundaries become central

On clicks, rhythm breaks and boundarytones in Russian

Ludger Paschen (Leipzig)

25/06/2015v. 26/06/15

: ,

1 Central and peripheral topics in interactional lin-

guistics

Dialogue vs. Monologue

Audience design (Bell 1984), auditory scene analysis (Bregman & Ahad 1996),soliloquy as dialogue (Sappok 2013)

Pitch events in the centre of a phrase vs. at phrase boundaries

Functional richness of pitch accents vs. functional void of boundary tones in ToRI(Ode 2008)

Functional richness of boundary tones (Krause 2007; Rathcke 2009; Paschen 2015)

Proper linguistic vs. so-called para-linguistic categories

Breathing, clicks, phonetic outliers (Ogden 2012; Grenoble 2015)

Implicational universals in phonetic annotation depth (?)

- . . . . . . . . . . . . GAT2 . . . . . .

Question: How and when do peripherals become a central concern in talk-in-interaction?

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2 Boundary tones

The traditional system: 7 IKs (Bryzgunova 1980)

Phonological domain:

3 relevant parts: pre-centre, centre, post-centre

Meanings tied to whole IK, not decomposable

A formal decomposition: ToRI (Ode 2008)

6 (+2) pitch accents (PAs), 3 initial boundary tones (IBTs), 1 final boundary tone(FBT)

Communicative functions tied to PAs, not BTs

Proposing a functional decomposition (Paschen 2015)

Are BTs used for functions related to turn-taking?

Quantitative study: 2 recordings, 5 min., annotated for turn allocation, turn length,PAs and BTs

Question: Do BTs pattern with turn-taking features?

Results:

IBTs: Rather not (but cf. Couper-Kuhlen 1998 for English)

FBTs: Yes, with turn allocation

Self-selection non-low FBT Other-selection low FBT

Conclusion: BTs functionally motivated as independent units

3 Clicks

Usage of clicks

Click sounds or clicks: stops produced with velaric-ingressive airstream and a loud burst(Ladefoged & Maddieson 1996)

Clicks occur in non-click-languages

Unconscious usage:

Epiphenomenal articulatory artifacts (Simpson 2007)

Conscious usage:

Outside human verbal interaction

Addressing animals

As part of human verbal interaction

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Final M% of S2 indicating self-selection (recording from Ode 1989).

Final L% of S2 indicating other-selection (recording from Ode 1989).

Logical meaning (Gil 2013) Affective meaning (Gil 2013) Turn-taking (see below)

Previous research on English, data on other languages needed

Clicks in English

In English telephone speech (Wright 2005), clicks occur

between the first and second TCU of multi-unit, first-closing turns

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as turn-holding device when a speaker is searching for a word

Clicks demarcate the onset of new and disjunctive sequences (Wright 2007)

between units means the left periphery: clicks as marking incipient speakership (Ogden2013)

Claim: Clicks are used by (some) Russian speakers in everyday conversationto mark domain boundaries, in particular to maintain turn transitions and toindicate mode changes. In addition, affective usage of clicks is also attested.

Clicks in Russian I: Domain boundaries

Discourse domains according to Sappok (2010).

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Clicks in Russian I: Domain boundariesExample (1): ((ordS05-01.183-202))

01 5: 02 h03 04 [: ]05 12: [((laughs)) ]06 5: [ ] h07 12: [((laughs)) ]08 5: < (.) 09 :10 ((laughs)) hh11 : > (-)12 [|] (.) 13

Clicks in Russian II: Turn transitionExample (2): ((ordS05-03.247-258))

01 5: 02 h03 -04 05 1: - 06 [ ()]07 5: [[|] ] 08

Clicks in Russian III: Mode changing / affective meaningExample (3): ((ordS35-06.698-719))

01 35: h 02 - 03 () - ()04 [] (.) 05 (1.9)06 ::: (1.5)07 (-) 08 (-)

Clicks in Russian: Interim summary

Clicks coincide with domain boundaries (e.g. at the transition from a narrative to adescriptive segment)

Clicks may be used by speakers at the beginning of a new turn to consolidate self-selection (esp. after sequences with overlap)

Clicks may be used by speakers to indicate a change in / mode (Ivanov &Toporov 1965; Yokoyama 2001)

For this, markers of affective meanings are readily utilized

High degree of inter-speaker variation: clicks fairly frequent for 5, less frequent for24 and 35, not attested for 15

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4 Rhythm

Rhythm as reflecting tendency for isochrony (Serstinova 2010)

Lexical strategies (particles, interjections, pronouns, . . . ) to conform to this tendency(Bogdanova-Beglarjan 2013)

Rhythm as resource for sequence organisation (topic poffering, displacement marking)and as a rhetorical device in utterance construction (Kern 2013)

Interaction of intonation and rhythm: pitch accent as a resource for compensatingsmaller unit lengths

Turn-initial accelerando at projected TRPs

Example (4): ((ordS35-04.356-363))01 35: 02 03 []04 1: [ ] 05 06 (.)07

S1: H*L compensating the non-isochronous second segment ().

5 Conclusion

Peripheral phonetic entities (events, elements, units, . . . ) frequently become central intalk-in-interaction

Speakers can locally and dynamically upgrade peripherals

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S2: Initial accelerando.

Combining phonetic detail (microlevel), interactional situation (mesolevel) and globalsociolinguistic variables (macrolevel)

More corpora like ORD but also more annotation depth are desirable

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Central and peripheral topics in interactional linguisticsBoundary tonesClicksRhythmConclusion

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