Categories and gradience in intonation: Evidence from linguistics and neurobiology

摘要

Multiple cues interact to signal multiple functions inintonation simultaneously, which makes intonationnotoriously complex to analyze. The Autosegmental-Metricalmodel for intonation analysis has proved to be an excellentvehicle for separating the components, but evidence for thephonetics/phonology dichotomy on which it hinges has provedelusive. Advocating a multidisciplinary approach, this paperoutlines a new research project which combines traditionalbehavioural experiments with neuro-linguistic data to advanceour understanding of the linguistic representation and neuralcorrelates of intonation.