When people engage each other in conversation, a substantial part of their message is conveyed by prosody, or 'the melody of speech.' Prosody includes variation in the rate at which we speak, the volume of our voices, and the rhythm and tune of our phrases. For example, prosody can change the string of speech sounds that make up the two English words 'triceratops oil' into three quite different words 'Try, Sarah, topsoil,' or even four words 'Trice, air, atop, soil.' With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Shari Speer and Dr. Kiwako Ito will explore the way speakers and listeners use prosody to communicate 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 melodically very different. What aspects of the melodies are most important for language understanding, and are these common across languages? Do speakers pronounce certain melodies 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 prosody in human conversation, and how does it reflect the structure of cognitive function during language use?
