Speech Prosody of New vs. Shared Information in Canadian English

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Author(s) / Creator(s)
- Arnhold, Anja
SSHRC Awarded IDG 2018: Canadian English is vastly understudied. This is particularly true regarding the melody and rhythm of Canadian speech (prosody/intonation). Prosody features as key in most theoretical and applied research that involves spoken language, but in Canadian English, these impacts are poorly understood. While standardized annotation systems have been developed for many languages and language variants, there is no such system for Canadian English. Importantly, we cannot assume that Canadian English prosody is the same as for Standard British or American English. Indeed there is preliminary evidence that Canadian English prosody differs from both of the other variants and deserves an investigation of its own. The proposed project forms examines how speakers of Canadian English use prosody, particularly to distinguish new information from information that is already shared. The first phase will largely concentrate on a relatively homogeneous group, University of Alberta undergraduate students, but will acoustically analyze and statistically model both scripted speech and spontaneous conversation. The second phase of the project will broaden the scope to include Canadian English English speakers of various ages, occupations and education levels from all over Canada in a perception study.
Date created

2018-02-01
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Type of Item

Research Material
DOI

https://doi.org/10.7939/R3WM14874