Prominence in gesture and speech in American English and Italian

Angela Marie Teresa Ott, Purdue University

Abstract

This research project has addressed the way that gesture and speech prominences are manifest in two different linguistic communities — Italian and American English. Investigation of three research questions reveals more similarities among the two language groups than differences in the gesture-speech relationship. Gesture strokes were found to precede speech prominences, and the beginnings of pitch accents tended to overlap with the gesture's stroke more often than the ends of pitch accents overlapping with the stroke. The American and Italian language groups both preferred to produce gestures with the hands, though the Italians exhibited a stronger preference. When gestures accompanied pitch accents, two American vowels were greatly affected; the vowels [a] and [u] had a longer duration, lower F0, and higher first and second formant frequencies. Two other American vowels and one Italian vowel were also affected by gesture to a lesser extent. The evidence provided here suggests that there is something universal about the interaction between gesture and speech. The trends found in the results of this study might indicate the existence of one, multi-modal system involving speech and co-speech gestures that constitutes the phonology of the language.

Degree

M.A.

Advisors

Brentari, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Linguistics|Language

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