The paper presents the definition of the TOPIC information unit within the Language into Act Theory (L-AcT) and the prosodic and informational criteria used for its recovery in spontaneous speech corpora: Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish and American English. The TOPIC develops the specific function of field of application of the illocutionary force accomplished by the COMMENT unit, it is performed through a prefix prosodic unit and precedes the Comment. The TOPIC must be coherent with the set of requirements determined by the illocutionary force of the Comment and adequate to the speaker-addressee relation. TOPIC mostly correlates in spoken corpora with NP and ADVP and must be functionally distinguished from “postponed Topic” (APPENDIX in the L-ACT framework). However, corpora also show a good percentage of modal expressions filling its prosodic and distributional conditions.
The definition of the TOPIC within Language into Act Theory and its identification in spontaneous speech corpora / Massimo Moneglia; Emanuela Cresti. - In: REVUE ROMANE. - ISSN 1600-0811. - ELETTRONICO. - (2018), pp. 30-62.
The definition of the TOPIC within Language into Act Theory and its identification in spontaneous speech corpora
Massimo Moneglia
;Emanuela Cresti
2018
Abstract
The paper presents the definition of the TOPIC information unit within the Language into Act Theory (L-AcT) and the prosodic and informational criteria used for its recovery in spontaneous speech corpora: Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish and American English. The TOPIC develops the specific function of field of application of the illocutionary force accomplished by the COMMENT unit, it is performed through a prefix prosodic unit and precedes the Comment. The TOPIC must be coherent with the set of requirements determined by the illocutionary force of the Comment and adequate to the speaker-addressee relation. TOPIC mostly correlates in spoken corpora with NP and ADVP and must be functionally distinguished from “postponed Topic” (APPENDIX in the L-ACT framework). However, corpora also show a good percentage of modal expressions filling its prosodic and distributional conditions.I documenti in FLORE sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.