Intonation Units Revisited: Cesuras in talk-in-interaction(29 Studies in Language and Social Interaction)

Intonation units have been notoriously difficult to identify in natural talk. Problems include fuzzy boundaries, lack of exhaustivity, and the potential circularity involved when studying their interface with other language-organizational dimensions. This volume advocates a way to resolve such problems: the ‘cesura’ approach. Cesuras, or breaks in the flow of talk, are created by discontinuities in the prosodic-phonetic parameters of speech that cluster to various extents at certain points in time. Using conversation-analytic and interactional-linguistic methodology, the volume identifies the parameters creating cesuras in talk-in-interaction and proposes ways to notate them depending on the researcher’s goal. It also offers a way to study the role of cesuras at the prosody-syntax interface non-circularly, which leads to new insights concerning language variation and change. The volume will thus be of major import to anyone working with natural spoken language, its chunks, its various dimensions, and its variation and change.

Table of Contents:
1. List of Tables; 2. List of Figures; 3. List of Abbreviations; 4. Acknowledgements; 5. Chapter 1. Introduction; 6. Chapter 2. Previous approaches to prosodic-phonetic structuring; 7. Chapter 3. The cesura approach; 8. Chapter 4. Studying cesuring in talk: Methodological considerations; 9. Chapter 5. The prosodic-phonetic parameters of cesuring; 10. Chapter 6. Cesuras in response organization and the syntax-prosody interface; 11. Chapter 7. Cesuras at work in language variation and change; 12. Chapter 8. Conclusions; 13. References; 14. Appendix; 15. Index

Review :
Alles in allem handelt es sich bei dieser Arbeit um einen neuen und spannenden Ansatz, der sicherlich in vielen Bereichen weiterführende Fragen aufwirft und einen neuen Blick auf etablierte linguistische Strukturen ermöglicht. The book presents a meticulous methodology for analysing the phonetic and prosodic structuring of natural speech data. There is no doubt that intonation phrases as an analytical construct are problematic for the empirical analysis of spoken language [...]. This book provides a strong and useful reference point for a very detailed approach, as the representation of empirical data is too often caught up in the need to categorise according to existing linguistic forms. The assumption that representation of an empirical reality is indeed possible is perhaps a rather positivist one. However, to have the methodological tools for an interaction analysis that is based on the most accurate notation possible is a strong addition to the field of interactional linguistics.