Skip to main content

Lund University Publications

LUND UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

Multimodal levels of prominence : a preliminary analysis of head and eyebrow movements in Swedish news broadcasts

Ambrazaitis, Gilbert LU ; Svensson Lundmark, Malin LU orcid and House, David LU (2015) Fonetik 2015 In Working Papers in General Linguistics and Phonetics 55. p.11-16
Abstract
This paper presents a first analysis of the distribution of head and eyebrow movements as a function of (a) phonological prominence levels (focal, non-focal) and (b) word accent (Accent 1, Accent 2) in Swedish news broadcasts. Our corpus consists of 31 brief news readings, comprising speech from four speakers and 986 words in total. A head movement was annotated for 229 (23.2%) of the words,

while eyebrow movements occurred much more sparsely (67 cases or 6.8%). Results of χ2-tests revealed a dependency of the distribution of movements on the one hand and focal accents on the other, while no systematic effect of the word accent type was found. However, there was an effect of the word accent type on the annotation of ‘double’ head... (More)
This paper presents a first analysis of the distribution of head and eyebrow movements as a function of (a) phonological prominence levels (focal, non-focal) and (b) word accent (Accent 1, Accent 2) in Swedish news broadcasts. Our corpus consists of 31 brief news readings, comprising speech from four speakers and 986 words in total. A head movement was annotated for 229 (23.2%) of the words,

while eyebrow movements occurred much more sparsely (67 cases or 6.8%). Results of χ2-tests revealed a dependency of the distribution of movements on the one hand and focal accents on the other, while no systematic effect of the word accent type was found. However, there was an effect of the word accent type on the annotation of ‘double’ head movements. These occurred very sparsely, and predominantly

in connection with focally accented compounds (Accent 2), which are

characterized by two lexical stresses. Overall, our results suggests that head beats might have a closer association with phonological prosodic structure, while eyebrow movements might be more restricted to higher-level prominence and information-structure coding. Hence, head and eyebrow movements can represent two quite different modalities of prominence cuing, both from a formal and functional

point of view, rather than just being cumulative prominence markers. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
; and
organization
publishing date
type
Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding
publication status
published
subject
keywords
focus, beat gesture, focal accent, information structure
host publication
Proceedings from Fonetik 2015 : Lund, June 8-10, 2015. Working Papers 55. 2015. - Lund, June 8-10, 2015. Working Papers 55. 2015.
series title
Working Papers in General Linguistics and Phonetics
editor
Svensson Lundmark, Malin ; Ambrazaitis, Gilbert and van de Weijer, Joost
volume
55
pages
6 pages
publisher
Centre for Languages and Literature, Lund University
conference name
Fonetik 2015
conference location
Lund, Sweden
conference dates
2015-06-08 - 2015-06-10
ISSN
0280-526X
project
Multi-modal levels of prominence: How verbal and visual signals interact in the coding of fine distinctions in information structure
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
444e9be0-1c19-4fcf-8929-615f72cb398d (old id 8570146)
date added to LUP
2016-04-01 14:34:04
date last changed
2023-06-08 02:50:47
@inproceedings{444e9be0-1c19-4fcf-8929-615f72cb398d,
  abstract     = {{This paper presents a first analysis of the distribution of head and eyebrow movements as a function of (a) phonological prominence levels (focal, non-focal) and (b) word accent (Accent 1, Accent 2) in Swedish news broadcasts. Our corpus consists of 31 brief news readings, comprising speech from four speakers and 986 words in total. A head movement was annotated for 229 (23.2%) of the words,<br/><br>
while eyebrow movements occurred much more sparsely (67 cases or 6.8%). Results of χ2-tests revealed a dependency of the distribution of movements on the one hand and focal accents on the other, while no systematic effect of the word accent type was found. However, there was an effect of the word accent type on the annotation of ‘double’ head movements. These occurred very sparsely, and predominantly<br/><br>
in connection with focally accented compounds (Accent 2), which are<br/><br>
characterized by two lexical stresses. Overall, our results suggests that head beats might have a closer association with phonological prosodic structure, while eyebrow movements might be more restricted to higher-level prominence and information-structure coding. Hence, head and eyebrow movements can represent two quite different modalities of prominence cuing, both from a formal and functional<br/><br>
point of view, rather than just being cumulative prominence markers.}},
  author       = {{Ambrazaitis, Gilbert and Svensson Lundmark, Malin and House, David}},
  booktitle    = {{Proceedings from Fonetik 2015 : Lund, June 8-10, 2015. Working Papers 55. 2015.}},
  editor       = {{Svensson Lundmark, Malin and Ambrazaitis, Gilbert and van de Weijer, Joost}},
  issn         = {{0280-526X}},
  keywords     = {{focus; beat gesture; focal accent; information structure}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  pages        = {{11--16}},
  publisher    = {{Centre for Languages and Literature, Lund University}},
  series       = {{Working Papers in General Linguistics and Phonetics}},
  title        = {{Multimodal levels of prominence : a preliminary analysis of head and eyebrow movements in Swedish news broadcasts}},
  url          = {{https://lup.lub.lu.se/search/files/4039262/8570221.pdf}},
  volume       = {{55}},
  year         = {{2015}},
}