134 Malcah Yaeger-Dror, Tania Granadillo, Shoji Takano, and Lauren Hall-Lew
only two situations: friendly phone calls will be compared with recordings
of newscasts. Analyses of other situations can be found elsewhere (e.g., Ya e -
ger-Dror 2002a, b; Yaeger-Dror, Hall-Lew, and Deckert 2002, 2003; Takano
2002, 2008; Kato 2004).
1.3 Culture
In different societies, prosodic prominence is manipulated in various ways,
even in apparently similar social situations. Some of these dissimilarieties
are purely linguistic (e.g., Grabe et al. 2003; Mennen 2006; Ladd et al. 2009),
while others appear to be culturally variable and may be dependent on soci-
etal norms of power and solidarity (Brown and Gilman 1960; McLemore
1991; Watts 2003; Locher 2004). The present study argues that neither source
of variation should be ignored.
This study will permit cross-cultural and cross-linguistic comparisons,
showing that there are nontrivial language-speci¿ c and culture-speci¿ c
components. Cognitive, linguistic, situational, and cultural factors must
all be incorporated as variables for any analysis of the prosody of negation
strategies.
- Review of the relevant literature
2.1 Parameters of prosodic variation
There are three primary phonetic parameters of prosodic variation which can
be mined for sociophonetic detail: loudness, measured acoustically as ampli-
tude (in decibals: dB), pitch variation, measured acoustically from a speaker’s
fundamental frequency, or F0 (in HZ), and duration (where the duration of the
word or its linguistic subcomponents can be compared with the duration of
nea rby equ ivalent token s a nd is mea su r able i n m illisecond s — or m sec). Fig u re
5.1 shows that all three are measurable using commonly available software:^3
F0 is found on the lowest vertical axis”Pitchtrack” and “Amplitude” has its
own vertical axis immediately above it; “Duration” is measured along the
horizontal axis. Each of these parameters is manipulated to varying degrees
in different languages. Fortunately, in all three languages investigated here,
the primary perceptual and productive parameter for prominence is funda-
mental frequency (F0) and is measurable from the pitchtrack itself (Yaeger-
Dror and Fagyal, forthcoming).