Chapter published in:
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. 181–219

The pragmatic analysis of speech and its illocutionary classification according to the Language into Act Theory

| University of Florence – LABLITA
According to the Language into Act Theory, reference units in speech have a pragmatic nature: they correspond to the activation of sensory-motor schemas leading to the performance of different speech acts. Our background is the affective and psychic motivations of the Human Birth Theory (Fagioli, 1971), compatible with recent theories of Embodied Cognition. Identification and classification of speech acts rest on corpus-based research. Speech activity is encoded by prosody, that conveys utterance boundaries, illocutionary force and information structure. The utterance nucleus is the Comment, responsible for illocutionary force. We illustrate the methodology for the induction of illocutions from corpora and detail pragmatic and prosodic features which allow classifying illocutionary types. A case study is presented for four original illocutions (self-conclusion, assertion taken for granted, ascertainment, evidentiality assertion).
Keywords: speech activity, illocutions, spoken corpora, prosody, information structure
Published online: 18 June 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.94.06cre
References

References

Arbib, M.
(2012) How the brain got language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Austin, J. L.
(1962) How to do things with words. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Barth-Weingarten, D., Reber, E., & Selting, M.
(Eds.) (2010) Prosody in interaction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Biber, D.
(1988) Variation across speech and writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S., & Finegan, E.
(Eds.) (1999) The longman grammar of spoken and written English. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Blanche-Benveniste, C.
(1997) Approches de la langue parlée en Français. Paris: Ophrys.Google Scholar
(2003) Le recouvrement de la syntaxe et de la macro-syntaxe. In A. Scarano (Ed.), Macro-syntaxe et pragmatique. L’analyse linguistique de l’oral (pp. 53–75). Roma: Bulzoni.Google Scholar
Blanche-Benveniste, C., Rouget, C., Bilger, M., & van den Eynde, K.
(Eds.) (1990) Le Français parlé. Études grammaticales. Paris: Éditions du C.N.R.S.Google Scholar
Buhmann, J., Caspers, J., van Heuven, V. J., Hoekstra, H., Martens, J. P., & Swerts, M.
(2002) Annotation of prominent words, prosodic boundaries and segmental lengthening by non-expert transcribers in the Spoken Dutch Corpus. In M. G. Rodriguez, & C. Suarez Araujo (Eds.), Proceedings of the 3rd LREC conference (pp. 779–785). Paris: ELRA.Google Scholar
Calesini, I.
(2017) Fagioli’s human birth theory and the possibility to cure mental illness. International Journal of Environment and Health, 8(3), 185–192. Retrieved from Crossref
Carletta, J., Isard, S., Doherty-Sneddon, G., Isard, A., Kowtko, J. C., & Anderson, A. H.
(1997) The reliability of a dialogue structure coding scheme. Computational Linguistics, 23(1), 13–31.Google Scholar
Carlson, L.
(1983) Dialogue games: An approach to discourse analysis. Dordrecht: Reidel.Google Scholar
Cavalcante, F. A., & Ramos, A. C.
(2016) The American English spontaneous speech minicorpus. Architecture and comparability. CHIMERA: Romance Corpora and Linguistic Studies, 3(2), 99–124.Google Scholar
Chafe, W.
(1970) Meaning and the structure of language. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
(1980) The pear stories: Cognitive, cultural, and linguistic aspects of narrative production. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar
Cheng, W., Greaves, C., & Warren, M.
(2008) A corpus-driven study of discourse intonation: The Hong Kong corpus of spoken English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Couper-Kuhlen, E.
(2004) Prosody and sequence organizations in English conversation; The case of new beginnings. In E. Couper-Kuhlen, & C. E. Ford (Eds.), Sound patterns in interaction (pp. 335–376). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cresti, E.
(2000) Corpus di italiano parlato. Firenze: Accademia della Crusca.Google Scholar
(2005) Per una nuova classificazione dell’illocuzione a partire da un corpus di parlato (LABLITA). In E. Burr (Ed.), Tradizione e innovazione: Il parlato. Atti del VI convegno internazionale SILFI (pp. 233–246). Pisa: Cesati.Google Scholar
(2011) The definition of focus in the framework of the Language into Act Theory (L-AcT). In A. Panunzi, T. Raso, & H. Mello (Eds.), Pragmatics and prosody. Illocution, modality, attitude, information patterning and speech annotation (pp. 39–82). Firenze: Firenze University Press.Google Scholar
(2017) The empirical foundation of illocutionary classification. In A. De Meo & F. Dovetto (Eds.), Atti del convegno, la comunicazione parlata, Napoli, SLI – GSCP International Conference Napoli 2016 (pp. 243–264). Napoli: Aracne.Google Scholar
(2018) Per una classificazione empirica dell’illocuzione. Lo stato dell’arte. In M. Biffi, F. Cialdini, & R. Setti (Eds.), “Acciò che’l nostro dire sia ben chiaro”. Scritti per Nicoletta Maraschio (pp. 261–279) Firenze: Accademia della Crusca.Google Scholar
(2019) Dal polilogo al monologo nell’italiano parlato: La base pragmatico/prosodica del bi-/multi-dialogo e la sua declinazione monologica in testi narrativi e argomentativi. In E. Jamirovsky & M. Durkiewicz (Eds.), Dal monologo al polilogo: l’Italia nel mondo. Lingue, letterature e culture in contatto.Kwartalinik Neofilologiczny, 2–2019, vol. III, 341–352Google Scholar
Cresti, E., & Firenzuoli, V.
(1999) Illocution et profils intonatifs de l’italien. Revue Française de Linguistique Appliquèe, 4(2), 77–98.Google Scholar
Cresti, E., & Fujimura, I.
(2018) The information structure of spontaneous spoken Japanese and Italian in comparison: A pilot study. In A. Manco (Ed.), Le lingue extraeuropee e l’italiano. Problemi didattici, sociolinguistici, culturali (pp. 167–189). Milano: Officina 21.Google Scholar
Cresti, E., & Moneglia, M.
(Eds.) (2005) C-ORAL-ROM. Integrated reference corpora for spoken romance languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2018) The illocutionary basis of information structure. Language into Act Theory (L-AcT). In E. Adamou, K. Haude, & M. Vanhove (Eds.), Information structure in lesser-described languages: Studies in prosody and syntax (pp. 359–401). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
this volume). Some notes on the excerpts according to L-AcT. In S. Izre’el, H. Mello, A. Panunzi, & T. Raso Eds. In search of basic units of spoken language: A corpus-driven approach Amsterdam John Benjamins
Cresti, E., Moneglia, M., & Martin, P.
(2003) L’intonation des illocutions naturelles répresentatives: Analyse et validation perceptive. In A. Scarano (Ed.), Macro-syntaxe et pragmatique. L’analyse linguistique de l’oral (pp. 243–264). Roma: Bulzoni.Google Scholar
Cresti, E., Moneglia, M., & Panunzi, A.
(2018) The LABLITA corpus & the Language into Act Theory: Analysis of Viterbo excerpts. In A. De Dominicis (Ed.), Atti del convegno internazionale “Speech audio archives: Preservation, restoration, annotation, aimed at supporting the linguistic analysis”. Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, CDXV, n.137 (pp. 47–63).Google Scholar
Cresti, E., Moneglia, M., & Tucci, I.
(2011) Annotation de l’entretien d’Anita Musso selon la théorie de la langue en acte. Langue Française, 2, 95–110. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Crystal, D.
(1975) The English tone of voice. London: Arnold.Google Scholar
Danieli, M., Garrido, J. M., Moneglia, M., Panizza, A., Quazza, S., & Swerts, M.
(2004) Evaluation of consensus on the annotation of prosodic breaks in the romance corpus of spontaneous speech C-ORAL-ROM. In M. T. Lino, M. F. Xavier, F. Ferreira, R. Costa, & R. Silva (Eds.), Proceedings of the 4th LREC conference (pp. 1513–1516). Paris: ELRA.Google Scholar
Debaisieux, J.-M.
(Ed.) (2013) Analyses linguistiques sur corpus: Subordination et insubordination en français. Paris: Hermès-Lavoisier.Google Scholar
Degand, L. & Simon, A.
(2009) Mapping prosody and syntax as discourse strategy: How basic discourse units vary across genres. In A. Wichmann, D. Barth-Weingarten, & N. Dehé (Eds.), Where prosody meets pragmatics: Research at the interface (pp. 79–105). Bingley: Emerald. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
DIT++ Taxonomy of dialogue acts
Version 5.2) [Computer software]. Retrieved from http://​dit​.uvt​.nl/
Du Bois, J. W., Cumming, S., Schuetze-Coburn, S., & Paolino, D.
(Eds.) (1992) Discourse transcription. Santa Barbara papers in linguistics 4. Santa Barbara, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Du Bois, J. W., Chafe, W. L., Meyer, C., & Thompson, S. A.
(2000) Santa Barbara corpus of spoken American English, Part 1. Philadelphia, PA: Linguistic Data Consortium.Google Scholar
Egorova, N., Shtyrov, Y., & Pulvermüller, F.
(2015) Brain basis of communicative actions in language. NeuroImage, 125, 857–867. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Fagioli, M.
(2010) Istinto di morte e conoscenza. Roma: L’Asino d’oro.Google Scholar
(2011) La marionetta e il burattino. Roma: L’Asino d’oro.Google Scholar
(2012) Teoria della nascita e castrazione umana. Roma: L’Asino d’oro.Google Scholar
Fava, E.
(1995) Tipi di atti e tipi di frase. In L. Renzi, G. Salvi, & A. Cardinaletti (Eds.), Grande grammatica iItaliana di consultazione (pp. 19–48). Bologna: Il Mulino.Google Scholar
Firenzuoli, V.
(2000) Nuovi dati statistici sull’italiano parlato. Romanische Forschungen, 13, 213–225.Google Scholar
(2003) Le forme intonative di valore illocutivo dell’Italiano parlato: Analisi sperimentale di un corpus di parlato spontaneo (LABLITA) (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Università di Firenze, Italy.Google Scholar
Gatti, M. G., Becucci, E., Fargnoli, F., Fagioli, M., Ådén, U., & Buonocore, G.
(2012) Functional maturation of neocortex: A base of viability. The Journal of Maternal-Fetal & Neonatal Medicine, 25(1), 101–103. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Giorgini, L., Petrucci, M., Melcarne, R., Raballo, A., Gatti, M., & Gebhardt, E.
forthcoming). A contribute to the psychotherapeutic treatment according to the Human Birth Theory. In Proceedings of XII world congress of psychiatry, 27–30th September 2018. Mexico City: Elsevier.
Goldsmith, J.
(1990) Autosegmental and metrical phonology. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
’t Hart, J., Collier, R., & Cohen, A.
(1990) A perceptual study on intonation. An experimental approach to speech melody. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Izre’el, S.
(2005) Intonation units and the structure of spontaneous spoken language: A view from Hebrew. In C. Auran, R. Bernard, C. Chanet, A. Colass, A. Di Christo, C. Portes, A. Reynier, & M. Vion (Eds.), Proceedings of the IDP05 international symposium on discourse-prosody interfaces. Aix-en-Provence: Université de Provence.Google Scholar
Fedorova, O.V., & Kibrik, A.A.
(Eds.) (2020) The MCD handbook: A practical guide to annotating multichannel discourse. Moscow: Institute of Linguistics RAS.Google Scholar
Izre’el, S., & Mettouchi, A.
(2015) Representation of speech in CorpAfroAs: Transcriptional strategies and prosodic units. In A. Mettouchi, M. Vanhove, & D. Caubet (Eds.), Corpus-based studies of lesser-described languages: The CorpAfroAs corpus of spoken AfroAsiatic languages (pp. 13–41). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Karcevsky, S.
(1931) Sur la phonologie de la phrase. Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague, 4, 188–228.Google Scholar
Katz, J. J.
(1977) Propositional structure and illocutionary force: A study of the contribution of sentence meaning to speech acts. New York, NY: T.Y. Crowell.Google Scholar
Kempson, R. M.
(1977) Semantic theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Krifka, M.
(2007) Basic notions of information structure. In C. Fery & M. Krifka (Eds.), Interdisciplinary studies on information structure (Vol. 6, pp. 13–56). Potsdam: Universitätsverlag.Google Scholar
Krifka, M., & Musan, R.
(Eds.) (2012) The expression of information structure. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lacheret-Dujour, A., Kahane, S., & Pietrandrea, P.
(Eds.) (2018) Rhapsodie: A prosodic and syntactic tree-bank for spoken French. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Leech, G.
(2014) The pragmatics of politeness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Maccari, S., Polese, D., Reynaert, M.-L., & Fagioli, F.
(2016) Early-life experiences and the development of adult diseases with a focus on mental illness: The human birth. Neuroscience, 342, 232–251. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Martin, P.
(2015) The structure of spoken language. Intonation in romance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
MacWhinney, B.
(2000) The CHILDES project: Tools for analyzing talk (3rd ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Mello, H.
(2014) Methodological issues for spontaneous speech corpora compilation: The case of C-ORAL-BRASIL. In T. Raso & H. Mello, (Eds.), Spoken corpora and linguistic studies (pp. 27–68). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Mello, H., Raso, T., Mittmann, M., Vale, H., & Côrtes, P.
(2012) Transcrição e segmentação prosódica do corpus C-ORAL-BRASIL: Critérios de implementação e validação. In T. Raso & H. Mello (Eds.), C-ORAL-BRASIL I: Corpus de referência de português brasileiro falado informal (pp. 125–176). Belo Horizonte: Editora UFMA.Google Scholar
Mittmann-Malvessi, M., & Raso, T.
(2012) The C-ORAL-BRASIL informationally tagged mini-corpus. In H. Mello, A. Panunzi, & T. Raso (Eds.), Illocution, modality, attitude, information patterning and speech annotation (pp. 151–183). Firenze: Firenze University Press.Google Scholar
Mollo, G., Pulvermüller, F., & Hauk, O.
(2016) Movement priming of EEG/MEG brain responses for action-words characterizes the link between language and action. Cortex, 74, 262–276. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Moneglia, M.
(2006) Units of analysis of spontaneous speech and speech variation in a cross-linguistic perspective. In Y. Kawaguchi, S. Zaima, & T. Takagaki (Eds.), Spoken language corpus and linguistics informatics (pp. 153–179). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2011) Spoken corpora and pragmatics. Revista Brasileira de Lingustica Aplcada, 11(2), 479–519. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Moneglia, M., & Cresti, E.
(1997) L’intonazione e i criteri di trascrizione del parlato adulto e infantile. In U. Bortolini, & E. Pizzuto (Eds.), Il progetto CHILDES Italia (pp. 57–90). Pisa: Del Cerro.Google Scholar
(2006) C-ORAL-ROM prosodic boundaries for spontaneous speech analysis. In Y. Kawaguchi, S. Zaima, & T. Takagaki (Eds.), Spoken language corpus and linguistics informatics (pp. 89–114). Amsterdam: Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2015) The cross-linguistic comparison of information patterning in spontaneous speech corpora: Data from C-ORAL-ROM ITALIAN and C-ORAL-BRASIL. In S. Klaeger, & B. Thörle (Eds.), Interactional linguistics: Grammar and interaction in romance languages from a contrasting point of view (pp. 107–128). Tübingen: Stauffenburg.Google Scholar
Moneglia, M., & Raso, T.
(2014) Notes on the Language into Act Theory. In T. Raso & H. Mello (Eds.), Spoken corpora and linguistics studies (pp. 468–494). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Moneglia, M., Raso, T., Mittmann-Malvessi, M., & Mello, H.
(2010) Challenging the perceptual relevance of prosodic breaks in multilingual spontaneous speech corpora: C-ORAL-BRASIL/C-ORAL-ROM. In Speech prosody 2010 conference proceedings. (pp. 1–4). Chicago, IL.Google Scholar
Nicolás Martínez, M. C.
(2012) Cor-DiAL (Corpus oral didáctico anotado lingüísticamente). Madrid: Liceus.Google Scholar
Nicolás Martínez, M. C., & Lombán, M.
(2018) Mini-corpus del español para DB-IPIC. CHIMERA, 5(2). CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Panunzi, A., & Gregori, L.
(2011) DB-IPIC. AN XML database for the representation of information structure in spoken language. In H. Mello, A. Panunzi, & T. Raso (Eds.), Pragmatics and prosody. Illocution, modality, attitude, information patterning and speech annotation (pp. 133–150). Firenze: Firenze University Press.Google Scholar
Panunzi, A., & Mittmann-Malvessi, M.
(2014) The IPIC resource and a cross-linguistic analysis of information structure in Italian and Brazilian Portuguese. In T. Raso & H. Mello (Eds.), Spoken corpora and Linguistic Studies (pp. 129–151). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Pierrehumbert, J., & Hirschberg, G.
(1990) Intonational phrasing and discourse segmentation. In P. R. Cohen, J. Morgan, & M. E. Pollack (Eds.), Intentions in Communication (pp. 271–311). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Raso, T.
(2014) Prosodic constraints for discourse markers. In T. Raso & H. Mello (Eds.), Spoken corpora and linguistic studies (pp. 411–467). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Raso, T., & Mello, H.
(Eds.) (2012) C-ORAL-BRASIL I: Corpus de referência de português brasileiro falado informal. Belo Horizonte: UFMG.Google Scholar
Raso, T., & Mittmann-Malvessi, M.
(2009) Validação estatística dos critérios de segmentação da fala espontânea no corpus C-ORAL-BRASIL. Revista de Estudos da Linguagem, 17(2), 73–91. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Reed, C.
(2006) Representing dialogic argumentation. Knowledge-Based Systems, 19, 22–31. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Rocha, B.
(2016) Uma metodologia empírica para a identificação e descrição de ilocuções e a sua aplicação para o estudo da ordem em PB e Italiano (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil).Google Scholar
Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. A., & Jefferson, G.
(1974) A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation, Language, 50(4), 696–735. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Sbisà, M.
(1989) Linguaggio, ragione, interazione: Per una teoria pragmatica degli atti linguistici. Bologna: Il Mulino.Google Scholar
Sbisà, M., & Turner, K.
(Eds.) (2013) Pragmatics of speech actions. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, E. A.
(1986) Turn organization: One intersection of grammar and interaction. In E. Ochs, E. A. Schegloff, & S. Thompson (Eds.), Interaction and grammar (pp. 52–133). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
(2007) Sequence organization in interaction. A primer in conversation analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Searle, J. R.
(1969) Speech acts: An essay in the philosophy of language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Searle, J. R., & Vanderveken, D.
(1985) Foundations of illocutionary logic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Stalnaker, R.
(1999) Context and content. Oxford: Oxford University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Swerts, M.
(1997) Prosodic features at discourse boundaries of different strength. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 101, 514–521. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Swerts, M., & Geluykens, R.
(1993) The prosody of information units in spontaneous monologues. Phonetica, 50, 189–196. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Vanderveken, D.
(1990) Meaning and speech acts: Volume 1, principles of language use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Weisser, M.
(2014) The dialogue annotation and research tool (DART) (Version 1.0) [Computer software]. Retrieved from martinweisser​.org​/ling​.softhtml#DART
(2018) How to do corpus pragmatics on pragmatically annotated data: Speech acts and beyond. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar

audio

Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Bossaglia, Giulia, Heliana Mello & Tommaso Raso
2020.  In In Search of Basic Units of Spoken Language [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 94], ► pp. 221 ff. Crossref logo
Cresti, Emanuela & Massimo Moneglia
2020.  In In Search of Basic Units of Spoken Language [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 94], ► pp. 383 ff. Crossref logo
Kibrik, Andrej A., Nikolay A. Korotaev & Vera I. Podlesskaya
2020.  In In Search of Basic Units of Spoken Language [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 94], ► pp. 35 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 18 september 2021. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.