ON THE ANALYSIS OF PROSODY IN SPONTANEOUS SPEECH WITH EXEMPLIFICATION FROM SWEDISH AND FRENCH

This paper reports on a research project concerning prosody in spontaneous speech. Two questions inaugurate the project. The first one concerns prosodic differences between spontaneous speech and read speech. Evidence from Swedish shows that these differences are not fundamental. The second question concerns the relationship between prosody and discourse categories. A methodology has been developed in order to study this relationship. Four different kinds of analyses are applied: (1) analysis of the discourse structure of the speech corpus without specific reference to prosodic information, (2) auditory analysis in the form of a prosody-oriented transcription, (3) acoustic-phonetic analysis and (4) analysis-by-synthesis. Part of this analysis is illustrated with exemplification from a persuasive monologue in French political rhetoric. Focal accent and contrast in pitch range seem to account for typical prosodic means used during political debate.