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In Search of Basic Units of Spoken Language: A corpus-driven approach
Edited by Shlomo Izre'el, Heliana Mello, Alessandro Panunzi and Tommaso Raso
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 94] 2020
► pp. 35–76

Chapter 1
Russian spoken discourse

Local structure and prosody

| Institute of Linguistics RAS and Lomonosov Moscow State University
| Russian State University for the Humanities
| Russian State University for the Humanities

We previously developed an approach to spoken Russian monologic discourse, and are now extending that, looking primarily at interactional multi-party discourse, contextualizing speech phenomena as multichannel (multimodal) communication. The evidence analyzed is the Russian Pear Chats and Stories corpus, see <multidiscourse​.ru>. Scores transcripts are introduced to annotate the interlocutors’ shared time line, including periods of silence. The elementary discourse unit (EDU) is posited as a central building block of local discourse structure. Canonical EDUs coincide with clauses; additionally, subclausal, superclausal, and paraclausal EDUs are found. Prosodic phenomena are considered; EDUs and groups of EDUs are accounted through a discourse-semantic category of phase. Disfluencies and other structural phenomena are systematically treated. Conventions of discourse transcription capture both prosodic and functional aspects of discourse.

Keywords: spoken discourse, discourse transcription, local discourse structure, elementary discourse unit, prosody, pause, discourse accent, phase, spoken sentence
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.General organization of vocal discourse
  • 3.Elementary discourse units
    • 3.1Identification
    • 3.2EDUs and clauses
  • 4.Accents, pitch, and phase
  • 5.Illocution-final EDUs
    • 5.1Statement and question
    • 5.2Directive
    • 5.3Semi-statement
    • 5.4Vocative
    • 5.5Exclamation
  • 6.Illocution-non-final EDUs
    • 6.1Default incompleteness: Rising pitch accent
    • 6.2Default incompleteness: Falling pitch accent plus a subsequent rise
    • 6.3Default incompleteness: Falling pitch accent
    • 6.4Default incompleteness combined with a local illocutionary meaning
    • 6.5Elucidation
    • 6.6Inexhaustiveness
  • 7.Disfluencies
  • 8.Other phenomena
  • 9.Conclusion: Vocal channels and their interaction with non-vocal channels
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 18 June 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.94.01kib
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Izre'el, Shlomo
2020. Chapter 2. The basic unit of spoken language and the interfaces between prosody, discourse and syntax. In In Search of Basic Units of Spoken Language [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 94], ► pp. 77 ff. DOI logo
Izre'el, Shlomo, Heliana Mello, Alessandro Panunzi & Tommaso Raso
2020. Introduction. In search of a basic unit of spoken language. In In Search of Basic Units of Spoken Language [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 94], ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
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2021. Language, Cognitive Systems, and the Methodology of Observation. In Advances in Cognitive Research, Artificial Intelligence and Neuroinformatics [Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, 1358], ► pp. 3 ff. DOI logo
Kibrik, Andrej A., Nikolay A. Korotaev & Vera I. Podlesskaya
2020. Chapter 6. The Moscow approach to local discourse structure. In In Search of Basic Units of Spoken Language [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 94], ► pp. 367 ff. DOI logo
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