PROSODIC SEGMENTATION AND FUNCTIONAL CORRELATIONS: THE CASE OF JAPANESE

This paper presents a pilot study based on the NUCC corpus aimed at verifying the consistency of the Language into Act Theory (L-AcT) for the annotation of information structure in spoken Japanese. L-AcT focusses on the perceptual relevance of prosodic breaks, foresees a strict correspondence between prosodic units and information units and grounds the Information structure on the unit bearing the illocutionary cues (Comment). Although the analyzed data are limited, the pilot confirms the theoretical assumption that the detection of terminal breaks in speech goes hand in hand with the identification of speech acts by competent speakers. The illocutive definition of the Comment is also verified on the basis of pragmatic evidence. The model also foresees a typology of information functions. The main types which pattern the utterance (Topic, Parenthesis, Appendix and Dialogic Units) also fit with the analysis of the Japanese data. The properties of Information structure turn out largely language independent. Japanese word order (SOV) applies within the Information unit, but it does not across information units, as exemplified by post-verbal tails in Appendixes. Beyond the occurrence of morphemes and particles, which usually mark cases and functions in this language, the Topic-Comment Information structure can be performed solely by the prosody. The frequency of information units such as the Topic and the Appendix, instead, seems a language independent feature