Cover not available
Part of
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. 367–382

Chapter 6
The Moscow approach to local discourse structure

An application to English

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

This chapter is an exploratory study in which we apply an approach to local discourse structure and prosody, developed for spoken Russian, to English talk. A key conceptual element of our approach is the notion of elementary discourse unit (EDU). EDUs are identified on the basis of prosodic criteria and demonstrate substantial correspondence to clauses. A range of structural, prosodic and discourse-semantic phenomena are reviewed, including pausing, discourse accent, phase, and spoken sentence. The analysis begins with those phenomena that are characteristic of both monologic and multi-party discourse, and proceeds with those features that are only found in interactional exchange. The Russian-oriented system of discourse transcription and analysis turns out to be generally applicable to the English evidence.

Keywords: spoken discourse, discourse transcription, local discourse structure, elementary discourse unit, prosody, pause, discourse accent, phase, spoken sentence
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Basics
  • 3.More complex instances
  • 4.Challenges of multi-party discourse
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 18 June 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.94.15kib
References (25)
Boersma, P.
(2001) Praat, a system for doing phonetics by computer. GLOT International, 5(9/10), 341–345.Google Scholar
Boersma, P., & Weenink, D.
(2012) Praat: Doing phonetics by computer (Version 5.3.04) [Computer software]. Retrieved from [URL].
Chafe, W.
(1994) Discourse, consciousness, and time. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
(2001) The analysis of discourse flow. In D. Schiffrin, D. Tannen, & H. E. Hamilton (Eds.), The handbook of discourse analysis (pp. 673–687). Malden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Clark, H. H., & Clark, E. V.
(1977) Psychology and language. New York, NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.Google Scholar
Cruttenden, A.
(1986) Intonation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Degand, L., & Simon, A. C.
(2009) Mapping prosody and syntax as discourse strategies: How basic discourse units vary across genres. In D. Barth-Weingarten, N. Dehé, & A. Wichmann (Eds.), Where prosody meets pragmatics (pp. 81–107). Bingley: Emerald. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Domínguez, M., Farrús, M., & Wanner, L.
(2016) An automatic prosody tagger for spontaneous speech. In Proceedings of COLING 2016, the 26th international conference on computational linguistics: Technical papers (pp. 377–386). Osaka.Google Scholar
Du Bois, J. W., Schuetze-Coburn, S., Cumming, S., & Paolino, D.
(1992) Discourse transcription. Santa Barbara Papers in Linguistics, 4, 1–225.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. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kibrik, A. A.
(2011) Cognitive discourse analysis: Local discourse structure. In M. Grygiel & L. A. Janda (Eds.), Slavic linguistics in a cognitive framework (pp. 273–304). Frankfurt: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Kibrik, A. A., Korotaev, N. A., & Podlesskaya, V. I.
this volume). Russian spoken discourse: Local structure and prosody. 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 DOI logo
Kibrik, A. A., & Podlesskaya, V. I.
(Eds.) (2009) Rasskazy o snovidenijax: korpusnoe issledovanie ustnogo russkogo diskursa [Night dream stories: A corpus study of spoken Russian discourse]. Moscow: Jazyki slavjanskix kul’tur.Google Scholar
Kodzasov, S. V.
(1996) Kombinatornaja model’ frazovoj prosodii [A combinatory model of phrasal prosody]. In T. M. Nikolaeva (Ed.), Prosodičeskij stroj russkoj reči [Prosodic structure of the Russian speech] (pp. 85–123). Moscow: IRJA RAN.Google Scholar
(2009) Issledovanija v oblasti russkoj prosodii [Studies in the field of Russian prosody]. Moscow: Jazyki slavjanskix kul’tur.Google Scholar
Krivnova, O. F.
(2016) Prosodičeskoe členenie zvučaščego teksta: tesktovaja lokalizacija dyxatel’nyx pauz [Prosodic phrasing in spoken text: Localization of breathing pauses]. Computational Linguistics and Intellectual Technologies: Papers from the Annual International Conference “Dialog”, 15(22), 340–354. Retrieved from [URL]
Litvinenko, A. O., Podlesskaya, V. I., & Kibrik, A. A.
(2009) Analiz rasskazov o snovidenijax s tochki zrenija ierarxičeskoj struktury diskursa. In A. A. Kibrik, & V. I. Podlesskaya (Eds.), Rasskazy o snovidenijax: korpusnoe issledovanie ustnogo russkogo diskursa [Night dream stories: A corpus study of spoken Russian discourse] (pp. 431–462). Moscow: Jazyki slavjanskix kul’tur.Google Scholar
Mann, W. C., & Thompson, S. A.
(1988) Rhetorical structure theory: Toward a functional theory of text organization. Text, 8, 243–281. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pietrandrea, P., Kahane, S., Lacheret, A., & Sabio, F.
(2014) The notion of sentence and other discourse units in corpus annotation. In T. Raso, & H. Mello (Eds.), Spoken corpora and linguistic studies (pp. 331–364). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Podlesskaya, V. I.
(2015) A corpus-based study of self-repairs in Russian spoken monologues. Russian Linguistics, 39 (1), 63–79. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stelma, J. H., & Cameron, L. J.
(2007) Intonation units in spoken interaction: Developing transcription skills. Text and Talk, 27(3), 361–393. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Svetozarova, N. D., Vol’skaja, N. B., Pavlova, A. V., & Shitova, L. F.
(1988) Prosodičeskaja organizacija russkoj spontannoj reči [Prosodic organization of spontaneous Russian speech]. In N. D. Svetozarova (Ed.), Fonetika spontannoj reči [Phonetics of spontaneous speech] (pp. 141–182). Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Leningradskogo Universiteta.Google Scholar
Ščerba, L. V.
(1955) Fonetika francuzskogo jazyka [French phonetics]. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo literatury na inostrannyx jazykax.Google Scholar
Xitina, M. V.
(2004) Delimitativnye priznaki ustno-rečevogo diskursa [Delimitative features of spoken discourse]. Moscow: MGLU.Google Scholar
Yanko, T.
(2008) Intonacionnye strategii russkoj reči v tipologičeskom aspekte [Intonational strategies in spoken Russian from a comparative perspective]. Moscow: Jazyki slavjanskix kul’tur.Google Scholar
Cited by (2)

Cited by 2 other publications

Kibrik, Andrej A., Nikolay A. Korotaev & Vera I. Podlesskaya
2020. Chapter 1. Russian spoken discourse. In In Search of Basic Units of Spoken Language [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 94], ► pp. 35 ff. DOI logo
Panunzi, Alessandro, Lorenzo Gregori & Bruno Rocha
2020. Chapter 8. Comparing annotations for the prosodic segmentation of spontaneous speech. In In Search of Basic Units of Spoken Language [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 94], ► pp. 403 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 july 2024. 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.