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63-603: The study of paralanguage is known as paralinguistics and was invented by George L. Trager in the 1950s, while he was working at the Foreign Service Institute of the U.S. Department of State . His colleagues at the time included Henry Lee Smith, Charles F. Hockett (working with him on using descriptive linguistics as a model for paralanguage), Edward T. Hall developing proxemics , and Ray Birdwhistell developing kinesics . Trager published his conclusions in 1958, 1960 and 1961. His work has served as

126-451: A basis for all later research, especially those investigating the relationship between paralanguage and culture (since paralanguage is learned, it differs by language and culture). A good example is the work of John J. Gumperz on language and social identity, which specifically describes paralinguistic differences between participants in intercultural interactions. The film Gumperz made for BBC in 1982, Multiracial Britain: Cross talk , does

189-460: A few neurons . Moaning and groaning both refer to an extended sound emanating from the throat, which is typically made by engaging in sexual activity. Moans and groans are also noises traditionally associated with ghosts , and their supposed experience of suffering in the afterlife. They are sometimes used to indicate displeasure. Throat clearing is a metamessaging nonverbal form of communication used in announcing one's presence upon entering

252-457: A glass of wine every night before I go to sleep" is coherent when made by a speaker identified as an adult, but registers a small semantic anomaly when made by a speaker identified as a child. This anomaly is significant enough to be measured through electroencephalography , as an N400 . Autistic individuals have a reduced sensitivity to this and similar effects. Emotional tone of voice , itself paralinguistic information, has been shown to affect

315-466: A guttural glottal breath exuded in a low tone. It often arises from a negative emotion , such as dismay, dissatisfaction, boredom, or futility. A sigh can also arise from positive emotions such as relief , particularly in response to some negative situation ending or being avoided. Like a gasp, a yawn , or a moan , a sigh is often an automatic and unintentional act. Scientific studies show that babies sigh after 50 to 100 breaths. This serves to improve

378-430: A mild warning or a slight annoyance. As a form of metacommunication , the throat-clear is acceptable only to signal that a formal business meeting is about to start. It is not acceptable business etiquette to clear one's throat when approaching a group on an informal basis; the basis of one's authority has already been established and requires no further reiteration by this ancillary nonverbal communication . Mhm

441-412: A normal word (learned like other words) and not paralanguage. If it is a word, it is a rare (or possibly even unique) one, being found with basically the same sound and meaning in almost all languages. Several studies have used the fMRI paradigm to observe brain states brought about by adjustments of paralinguistic information. One such study investigated the effect of interjections that differed along

504-442: A particularly good job of demonstrating cultural differences in paralanguage and their impact on relationships. Paralinguistic information, because it is phenomenal , belongs to the external speech signal ( Ferdinand de Saussure 's parole ) but not to the arbitrary conmodality. Even vocal language has some paralinguistic as well as linguistic properties that can be seen ( lip reading , McGurk effect ), and even felt , e.g. by

567-402: A question. In the second line, pitch falls, indicating a statement ‍ — a confirmation of the first line in this case. Finally, in the third line, a complicated rise-fall pattern indicates incredulity. Each pitch/intonation pattern communicates a different meaning. An additional pitch-related variation is pitch range ; speakers are capable of speaking with a wide range of pitch (this

630-482: A speaker is inviting the listener to make a contribution to the conversation. Prosody is also important in signalling emotions and attitudes. When this is involuntary (as when the voice is affected by anxiety or fear), the prosodic information is not linguistically significant. However, when the speaker varies their speech intentionally, for example to indicate sarcasm, this usually involves the use of prosodic features. The most useful prosodic feature in detecting sarcasm

693-536: A variety of "filled" pause types. Formulaic language pause fillers include "Like", "Er" and "Um", and paralinguistic expressive respiratory pauses include the sigh and gasp . Although related to breathing, pauses may contain contrastive linguistic content, as in the periods between individual words in English advertising voice-over copy sometimes placed to denote high information content, e.g. "Quality. Service. Value". Pausing or its lack contributes to

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756-438: A word. Take one popular English word for example: In English, lexical prosody is used for a few different reasons. As we have seen above, lexical prosody was used to change the form of a word from a noun to a verb. Another function of lexical prosody has to do with the grammatical role that a word plays within a sentence. Adjectives and nouns of a sentence are often stressed on the first syllables while verbs are often stressed on

819-674: Is a reduction in the mean fundamental frequency relative to other speech for humor, neutrality, or sincerity. While prosodic cues are important in indicating sarcasm, context clues and shared knowledge are also important. Emotional prosody was considered by Charles Darwin in The Descent of Man to predate the evolution of human language : "Even monkeys express strong feelings in different tones – anger and impatience by low, – fear and pain by high notes." Native speakers listening to actors reading emotionally neutral text while projecting emotions correctly recognized happiness 62% of

882-403: Is between a literal language and movement, by making a noise "hmm" or "mhm", to make a pause for the conversation or as a chance to stop and think. The "mhm" utterance is often used in narrative interviews, such as an interview with a disaster survivor or sexual violence victim. In this kind of interview, it is better for the interviewers or counselors not to intervene too much when an interviewee

945-474: Is described to be a natural component of language. The defining features of prosody that display the nuanced emotions of an individual differ across languages and cultures. Some writers (e.g., O'Connor and Arnold) have described intonation entirely in terms of pitch, while others (e.g., Crystal) propose that "intonation" is a combination of several prosodic variables. English intonation is often said to be based on three aspects: The choice of pitch movement and

1008-540: Is important to distinguish between the personal characteristics that belong to an individual's voice (for example, their habitual pitch range, intonation patterns, etc.) and the independently variable prosodic features that are used contrastively to communicate meaning (for example, the use of changes in pitch to indicate the difference between statements and questions). Personal characteristics that belong to an individual are not linguistically significant while prosodic features are. Prosody has been found across all languages and

1071-685: Is necessary for listeners to be able to identify the affective tone of the utterance. At lengths below this, there was not enough information for listeners to process the emotional context of the utterance. Unique prosodic features have been noted in infant-directed speech (IDS) - also known as baby talk , child-directed speech (CDS), or "motherese". Adults, especially caregivers, speaking to young children tend to imitate childlike speech by using higher and more variable pitch, as well as an exaggerated stress. These prosodic characteristics are thought to assist children in acquiring phonemes, segmenting words, and recognizing phrasal boundaries. And though there

1134-426: Is no evidence to indicate that infant-directed speech is necessary for language acquisition, these specific prosodic features have been observed in many different languages. An aprosodia is an acquired or developmental impairment in comprehending or generating the emotion conveyed in spoken language. Aprosody is often accompanied by the inability to properly utilize variations in speech, particularly with deficits in

1197-427: Is sometimes referred to as the accentual function of prosody. A well-known example is the ambiguous sentence "I never said she stole my money", where there are seven meaning changes depending on which of the seven words is vocally highlighted. Prosody helps convey many other pragmatic functions, including expressing attitudes (approval, uncertainty, dissatisfaction, and so on), flagging turn-taking intentions (to hold

1260-415: Is talking. The "mhm" assures the interviewee that they are being heard and can continue their story. Observing emotional differences and taking care of an interviewee's mental status is an important way to find slight changes during conversation. "Huh?", meaning "what?" (that is, used when an utterance by another is not fully heard or requires clarification), is an essentially universal expression, but may be

1323-405: Is the basis of the metric pattern, we have poetry; when pitch is the pattern basis, we have rhythmic prose" (Weeks 11). Stress retraction is a popular example of phrasal prosody in everyday life. For example: Contrastive stress is another everyday English example of phrasal prosody that helps us determine what parts of the sentence are important. Take these sentences for example: Emphasizing that

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1386-483: Is the major factor, the resulting prominence is often called accent rather than stress. There is considerable variation from language to language concerning the role of stress in identifying words or in interpreting grammar and syntax. Although rhythm is not a prosodic variable in the way that pitch or loudness are, it is usual to treat a language's characteristic rhythm as a part of its prosodic phonology. It has often been asserted that languages exhibit regularity in

1449-428: Is the study of elements of speech that are not individual phonetic segments (vowels and consonants) but which are properties of syllables and larger units of speech, including linguistic functions such as intonation , stress , and rhythm . Such elements are known as suprasegmentals . Prosody reflects the nuanced emotional features of the speaker or of their utterances: their obvious or underlying emotional state,

1512-474: Is typically associated with the following: Some of these cues are more powerful or prominent than others. Alan Cruttenden, for example, writes "Perceptual experiments have clearly shown that, in English at any rate, the three features (pitch, length and loudness) form a scale of importance in bringing syllables into prominence, pitch being the most efficacious, and loudness the least so". When pitch prominence

1575-454: Is used by listeners to guide decisions about the emotional affect of the situation. Whether a person decodes the prosody as positive, negative, or neutral plays a role in the way a person decodes a facial expression accompanying an utterance. As the facial expression becomes closer to neutral, the prosodic interpretation influences the interpretation of the facial expression. A study by Marc D. Pell revealed that 600 ms of prosodic information

1638-616: Is usually associated with excitement), while at other times with a narrow range. English makes use of changes in key ; shifting one's intonation into the higher or lower part of one's pitch range is believed to be meaningful in certain contexts. Stress functions as the means of making a syllable prominent. Stress may be studied in relation to individual words (named "word stress" or lexical stress ) or in relation to larger units of speech (traditionally referred to as "sentence stress" but more appropriately named " prosodic stress "). Stressed syllables are made prominent by several variables. Stress

1701-694: The Tadoma method. Speech signals arrive at a listener's ears with acoustic properties that may allow listeners to identify location of the speaker (sensing distance and direction, for example). Sound localization functions in a similar way also for non-speech sounds. The perspectival aspects of lip reading are more obvious and have more drastic effects when head turning is involved. The speech organs of different speakers differ in size. As children grow up, their organs of speech become larger, and there are differences between male and female adults. The differences concern not only size, but also proportions. They affect

1764-436: The isochrony article, this claim has not been supported by scientific evidence. Voiced or unvoiced, the pause is a form of interruption to articulatory continuity such as an open or terminal juncture . Conversation analysis commonly notes pause length. Distinguishing auditory hesitation from silent pauses is one challenge. Contrasting junctures within and without word chunks can aid in identifying pauses. There are

1827-418: The left hemisphere, which contains Wernicke's area ). Damage to the right inferior frontal gyrus causes a diminished ability to convey emotion or emphasis by voice or gesture, and damage to right superior temporal gyrus causes problems comprehending emotion or emphasis in the voice or gestures of others. The right Brodmann area 22 aids in the interpretation of prosody, and damage causes sensory aprosodia, with

1890-566: The STAIRS is how the man went up. Emphasizing that it was a MAN who went up the stairs. It's important to note that the right hemisphere of the brain dominates one's perception of prosody. In contrast to left hemisphere damage where patterns of aphasias are present, patterns of aprosodias are present with damage to the left hemisphere. In patients with right hemisphere lesions, they are characterized as monotonous and as lacking variety in their tone and expression. They're also seen to struggle with

1953-448: The ability to accurately modulate pitch, loudness, intonation, and rhythm of word formation. This is seen sometimes in autistic individuals. The three main types of aprosodia are: Lexical prosody refers to the specific amplitudes, pitches, or lengths of vowels that are applied to specific syllables in words based on what the speaker wants to emphasize. The different stressors placed on individual syllables can change entire meanings of

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2016-688: The articulation of adjacent word syllables, thereby changing the potential open junctures between words into closed junctures. Prosody has had a number of perceptually significant functions in English and other languages, contributing to the recognition and comprehension of speech. It is believed that prosody assists listeners in parsing continuous speech and in the recognition of words, providing cues to syntactic structure, grammatical boundaries and sentence type. Boundaries between intonation units are often associated with grammatical or syntactic boundaries; these are marked by such prosodic features as pauses and slowing of tempo, as well as "pitch reset" where

2079-477: The average person to decode conversational implicature of emotional prosody has been found to be slightly less accurate than traditional facial expression discrimination ability; however, specific ability to decode varies by emotion. These emotional have been determined to be ubiquitous across cultures, as they are utilized and understood across cultures. Various emotions, and their general experimental identification rates, are as follows: The prosody of an utterance

2142-448: The criteria of lexical index (more or less "wordy") as well as neutral or emotional pronunciation; a higher hemodynamic response in auditory cortical gyri was found when more robust paralinguistic data was available. Some activation was found in lower brain structures such as the pons, perhaps indicating an emotional response. George L. Trager George Leonard Trager ( / ˈ t r eɪ ɡ ər / ; March 22, 1906 – August 31, 1992)

2205-446: The emotive or attitudinal quality of an utterance. Typically, attitudes are expressed intentionally and emotions without intention, but attempts to fake or to hide emotions are not unusual. Consequently, paralinguistic cues relating to expression have a moderate effect of semantic marking. That is, a message may be made more or less coherent by adjusting its expressive presentation. For instance, upon hearing an utterance such as "I drink

2268-413: The fact that the acoustic frequencies in the voice of small vocalizers are high, while they are low in the voice of large vocalizers. This gives rise to secondary meanings such as "harmless", "submissive", "unassertive", which are naturally associated with smallness, while meanings such as "dangerous", "dominant", and "assertive" are associated with largeness. In most languages, the frequency code also serves

2331-412: The floor, to yield the turn, to invite a backchannel like uh-huh, and so on), and marking topic structure (starting a new topic, closing a topic, interpolating a parenthetical remark, and so on), among others. For example, David Brazil and his associates studied how intonation can indicate whether information is new or already established; whether a speaker is dominant or not in a conversation; and when

2394-420: The form of utterance (statement, question, or command), the presence of irony or sarcasm , certain emphasis on words or morphemes, contrast , focus , and so on. Prosody displays elements of language that are not encoded by grammar , punctuation or choice of vocabulary . In the study of prosodic aspects of speech, it is usual to distinguish between auditory measures ( subjective impressions produced in

2457-408: The highlighting of particular words to create different intonation patterns can be seen in the following English conversation: The exchange above is an example of using intonation to highlight particular words and to employ rising and falling of pitch to change meaning. If read out loud, the pitch of the voice moves in different directions on the word "cat." In the first line, pitch goes up, indicating

2520-402: The identification and discrimination of semantically neutral sentences with varying tones of happiness, sadness, anger, and indifference, exemplifying the importance of prosody in language comprehension and production. Producing these nonverbal elements requires intact motor areas of the face, mouth, tongue, and throat. This area is associated with Brodmann areas 44 and 45 ( Broca's area ) of

2583-416: The left frontal lobe . Damage to areas 44/45, specifically on the right hemisphere, produces motor aprosodia, with the nonverbal elements of speech being disturbed (facial expression, tone, rhythm of voice). Understanding these nonverbal elements requires an intact and properly functioning right-hemisphere perisylvian area , particularly Brodmann area 22 (not to be confused with the corresponding area in

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2646-526: The linguistic functions of intonation and stress, as well as other prosodic features such as rhythm and tempo. Additional prosodic variables have been studied, including voice quality and pausing. The behavior of the prosodic variables can be studied either as contours across the prosodic unit or by the behavior of boundaries. Prosodic features are suprasegmental, since they are properties of units of speech that are defined over groups of sounds rather than single segments. When talking about prosodic features, it

2709-482: The linguistically informative quality. The problem of how listeners factor out the linguistically informative quality from speech signals is a topic of current research. Some of the linguistic features of speech, in particular of its prosody , are paralinguistic or pre-linguistic in origin. A most fundamental and widespread phenomenon of this kind is described by John Ohala as the "frequency code". This code works even in communication across species. It has its origin in

2772-410: The lungs. Gasps also occur from an emotion of surprise , shock or disgust . Like a sigh, a yawn , or a moan , a gasp is often an automatic and unintentional act. Gasping is closely related to sighing, and the inhalation characterizing a gasp induced by shock or surprise may be released as a sigh if the event causing the initial emotional reaction is determined to be less shocking or surprising than

2835-413: The mechanical properties of lung tissue, and it also helps babies to develop a regular breathing rhythm. Behaviors equivalent to sighing have also been observed in animals such as dogs , monkeys , and horses . In text messages and internet chat rooms, or in comic books, a sigh is usually represented with the word itself, 'sigh', possibly within asterisks , *sigh*. Sighing is also a reflex, governed by

2898-557: The mind of the listener) and objective measures (physical properties of the sound wave and physiological characteristics of articulation that may be measured objectively). Auditory (subjective) and objective ( acoustic and articulatory) measures of prosody do not correspond in a linear way. Most studies of prosody have been based on auditory analysis using auditory scales. Auditorily, the major prosodic variables are: Acoustically, these prosodic variables correspond closely to: Different combinations of these variables are exploited in

2961-449: The observer first believed. As a symptom of physiological problems, apneustic respirations (a.k.a. apneusis), are gasps related to the brain damage associated with a stroke or other trauma. A sigh is a kind of paralinguistic respiration in the form of a deep and especially audible, single exhalation of air out of the mouth or nose, that humans use to communicate emotion. It is a voiced pharyngeal fricative , sometimes associated with

3024-449: The perception of word groups, or chunks. Examples include the phrase , phraseme , constituent or interjection . Chunks commonly highlight lexical items or fixed expression idioms . Chunking prosody is present on any complete utterance and may correspond to a syntactic category , but not necessarily. The well-known English chunk "Know what I mean?" in common usage sounds like a single word ("No-wada-MEEN?") due to blurring or rushing

3087-467: The pitch of the voice and to a substantial extent also the formant frequencies , which characterize the different speech sounds . The organic quality of speech has a communicative function in a restricted sense, since it is merely informative about the speaker. It will be expressed independently of the speaker's intention. Paralinguistic cues such as loudness, rate, pitch, pitch contour, and to some extent formant frequencies of an utterance, contribute to

3150-475: The purpose of distinguishing questions from statements. It is universally reflected in expressive variation, and it is reasonable to assume that it has phylogenetically given rise to the sexual dimorphism that lies behind the large difference in pitch between average female and male adults. In text-only communication such as email, chatrooms and instant messaging , paralinguistic elements can be displayed by emoticons , font and color choices, capitalization and

3213-469: The recognition of emotion may be quite low, of the order of 50%, hampering the complex interrelationship function of speech advocated by some authors. However, even if emotional expression through prosody cannot always be consciously recognized, tone of voice may continue to have subconscious effects in conversation. This sort of expression stems not from linguistic or semantic effects, and can thus be isolated from traditional linguistic content. Aptitude of

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3276-441: The resolution of lexical ambiguity . Some words have homophonous partners; some of these homophones appear to have an implicit emotive quality, for instance, the sad "die" contrasted with the neutral "dye"; uttering the sound /dai/ in a sad tone of voice can result in a listener writing the former word significantly more often than if the word is uttered in a neutral tone. Ordinary phonetic transcriptions of utterances reflect only

3339-424: The room or approaching a group. It is done by individuals who perceive themselves to be of higher rank than the group they are approaching and utilize the throat-clear as a form of communicating this perception to others. It can convey nonverbalized disapproval . In chimpanzee social hierarchy , this utterance is a sign of rank, directed by alpha males and higher-ranking chimps to lower-ranking ones and signals

3402-427: The second syllable. For example: Here, adults will emphasize the first syllable, "IN", as "increase" functions as an adjective. Here, adults will emphasize the second syllable, "CREASE", as "increase" functions as a verb. Another way that lexical prosody is used in the English language is in compound nouns such as "wishbone, mailbox, and blackbird" where the first compound is emphasized. Some suffixes can also affect

3465-496: The sentence into chunks ) and changes in intonation will reduce or remove the ambiguity. Moving the intonational boundary in cases such as the above example will tend to change the interpretation of the sentence. This result has been found in studies performed in both English and Bulgarian. Research in English word recognition has demonstrated an important role for prosody. Intonation and stress work together to highlight important words or syllables for contrast and focus . This

3528-426: The speaker's pitch level returns to the level typical of the onset of a new intonation unit. In this way potential ambiguities may be resolved. For example, the sentence "They invited Bob and Bill and Al got rejected" is ambiguous when written, although addition of a written comma after either "Bob" or "Bill" will remove the sentence's ambiguity. But when the sentence is read aloud, prosodic cues like pauses (dividing

3591-477: The time, anger 95%, surprise 91%, sadness 81%, and neutral tone 76%. When a database of this speech was processed by computer, segmental features allowed better than 90% recognition of happiness and anger, while suprasegmental prosodic features allowed only 44%–49% recognition. The reverse was true for surprise, which was recognized only 69% of the time by segmental features and 96% of the time by suprasegmental prosody. In typical conversation (no actor voice involved),

3654-441: The timing of successive units of speech, a regularity referred to as isochrony , and that every language may be assigned one of three rhythmical types: stress-timed (where the durations of the intervals between stressed syllables is relatively constant), syllable-timed (where the durations of successive syllables are relatively constant) and mora-timed (where the durations of successive morae are relatively constant). As explained in

3717-405: The use of non-alphabetic or abstract characters. Nonetheless, paralanguage in written communication is limited in comparison with face-to-face conversation, sometimes leading to misunderstandings. A gasp is a kind of paralinguistic respiration in the form of a sudden and sharp inhalation of air through the mouth . A gasp may indicate difficulty breathing and a panicked effort to draw air into

3780-447: The ways in which different words are stressed. Take "active" for example. Without the suffix, the lexical emphasis is on "AC". However, when we add the suffix -ity, the stress shifts to "TIV". Phrasal prosody refers to the rhythm and tempo of phrases, often in an artistic setting such as music or poetry, but not always. The rhythm of the English language has four different elements: stress, time, pause, and pitch. Furthermore, "When stress

3843-629: Was an American linguist . He was the president of the Linguistic Society of America in 1960. He was born in Newark, New Jersey . During his years at Yale in the 1930s and 1940s, he was a close associate of Edward Sapir , Morris Swadesh , Benjamin Lee Whorf , Charles Hockett , and after 1941, Leonard Bloomfield . From 1937, he collaborated with Whorf on historical-comparative Azteco-Tanoan languages , but further planned collaboration

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3906-793: Was cut short by Whorf's death in 1941. He wrote the entries on Language and Linguistics for the 14th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica . Like Sapir and Swadesh, he was a consultant of the International Auxiliary Language Association , which presented Interlingua in 1951. In the 1950s, Trager worked at the Foreign Service Institute of the Department of State , helping to train diplomats prior to their departure abroad. He worked there with Edward T. Hall , Henry Lee Smith, Charles F. Hockett , and Ray Birdwhistell . Trager's project

3969-766: Was the development of paralanguage , while Birdwhistell worked on kinesics and Hall worked on proxemics . He taught linguistics at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Tx from 1970 to 1971. In 1971, he moved to Northern Illinois University in DeKalb and stayed there until his retirement in 1974. (For details, see George Leonard Trager by Charles F. Hockett, Language, Vol. 69, No. 4 (Dec., 1993), pp. 778-788 (11 pages) He died in Pasadena, California . Paralanguage Prosody (linguistics) In linguistics , prosody ( / ˈ p r ɒ s ə d i , ˈ p r ɒ z -/ )

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