The Prosody of Public Speech

Project description

PURPOSE

The proposed research project concerns prosody – in particular pausing, fluency, and tonal (f0) variation including focus and emphasis – in speech presented publicly. The analyzed material will include interviews and political speeches as well as newscasts. The purpose is to identify features which characterize public speech, both read and spontaneous, through comparisons with non-public speech. The purpose is moreover to reveal how skilled public speakers use prosody to catch and keep the attention of their listeners, whether it be to inform or argue with them. Combined with acoustic analyses of prosody, subjective ratings of speakers will contribute to our knowledge of what characterizes a “good” or “skilled” speaker. Thus, the project, though basically in the area of phonetics, has an interdisciplinary character as it also addresses rhetoric issues.

MOTIVATION, RELEVANCE AND POTENTIAL IMPACT

The idea of approaching public speech has grown out of my previous studies and research projects in the field of prosody. These projects include the recently completed “Boundaries and groupings – the structuring of speech in different communicative situations” (funded by VR, The Swedish Research Council) in cooperation with a group at KTH, Stockholm, see Carlson et al. (2002) and http://www.speech.kth.se/grog/ . Some of my earlier studies have also concerned public speech. They will be dealt with under the heading “Preliminary results and studies of my own in the area of public speech”. Additional motivation for the proposed project is the growing interest today in public speech, and rhetoric in particular.
“The prosody of public speech” should be seen in the perspective of the significance given to the areas of speaking style variation and expressive speech during the last decades. The shift from read-aloud to spontaneous speech, and conversation in particular (e.g. Couper-Kuhlen, 1996) has also contributed to new insights into aspects of variation. This research is theoretically important, as it increases our knowledge of how human speech can be optimally adjusted to the communicative situation; in other words, it contributes to learning about the limits of human speech, or what is possible to communicate. Public speech offers a possibility to study speech that can be seen as extreme in this respect. In politics and elsewhere when burning issues are at stake and where often seriously committed individuals are involved, a rich expressive repertoire is made use of. In this domain, prosody has a major role. A skilled speaker using this expressive repertoire optimally has an efficient tool for approaching an audience. Taken together, this makes public speech an interesting area not only for phonetics but for rhetoric and media studies as well. Knowledge gained within the project may further be expected to be practically applicable.

STUDIES IN RHETORIC

The current interest in rhetoric is reflected in a great number of scientific publications, e.g. Johannesson (1990/1998), which provides a survey from Antiquity to modern times. There is also a rich production of textbooks, e.g. Hellspong (1992) and Strömquist (1996) in Sweden. Common to these publications is their focus on those aspects of rhetoric which do not concern the manner of speaking, that is, how speech is produced, although it is included in the concept of “rhetoric”. The emphasis is rather on argumentation and planning of the speech act, the rhetoric process. The linguistic form is also held to be important; correctness, refinement, and clarity are demanded. In addition, there are other, and to some extent conflicting, demands for elaboration and embellishment. Such elaborations include repetition, rhythm and other rhetorical devices, e g. the use of questions. The descriptions of how to speak are considerably less detailed and very often even vague; the voice of a skilled speaker should be “smooth”, “flexible”, “firm”, “soft”, “clear” and “clean” (Johannesson, 1990/1998, citing Quintilianus’ (ca AD 35-96) “Institutes of Oratory”). Furthermore, the speaker should aim at “a kind of levelness”, but the speech should also be varied and changing and the pronunciation clear without reductions. Pausing is recommended to increase clarity.
The above description is also more or less representative for the recommendations made to the successful speaker of today. Pausing and stress, well adjusted to the content of the message, are moreover held to be important in order to create an optimal situation and have a maximal effect on the listener.In other words, there is a kind of recipe for ”good speaking”, even though it is rather loosely formulated. This recipe also includes body language, “aktio” in rhetoric (in which the use of speech and voice is a part). How body language affects the impression of a speaker, however, lies outside the scope of the planned project, which focuses on speech produced by speakers out of sight of the listener.
Thus descriptions of prosody in the field of rhetoric most often have the character of a “handbook” for successful performance as a speaker. Yet, there are studies in which prosody is not similarly disregarded. Sigrell (2001) places importance on prosody in analyses of rhetorical-stylistic features. Sigrell’s work focuses on ”the implicit” – that which, in an argument, is not commented on directly but has to be inferred. Sigrell’s study includes among other things a thorough discussion of irony and claims are made for a specific prosody of irony. Prosody as a rhetorical device is also dealt with by e.g. Jørgensen et al., (1994). These researchers analysed the political debate about Denmark’s membership in the European Union. The analyses included impressionistic aspects of the speech produced by those involved. The subjective ratings were then matched with observations of the capability of the respective speakers to convince the listeners of their standpoint. Thus, prosody is dealt with in studies of rhetoric and eloquence, but they do not go beyond subjective impressions.

PHONETIC RESEARCH – THEORY AND EMPIRICAL FINDINGS

O’Connell and Kowal (2002) have conducted a survey of studies of American and German political speech in public media. They compare read-aloud and spontaneous speech in this setting and based on quantitative analyses found differences of the same kind as for non-public speech. They do not, however, delve into how public speech might differ from non-public speech. This issue is addressed by Touati (1991, 1993) who analyzed tonal and temporal characteristics in the speech of French politicians. These analyses were undertaken with a background in earlier studies of political rhetoric and, in addition, other types of speech in public media, e.g. a conversation over the telephone between listeners and the host of a popular program on Swedish Radio (“Ring så spelar vi”), see Bruce and Touati (1992). Very few other studies of public speech based on Swedish pay attention to prosody; Lindblad (1985), including acoustic analyses of local radio newscasts and Andersson (2002), dealing with TV news, are exceptions.
A study by Braga and Marques (2004) focuses on how prosodic features contribute to the listeners’ attention and interpretation of the message in political debate. The conception of a speaker as ”convincing”, “powerful” and ”dedicated”, is assumed to be reflected in (combinations of) prosodic features, or “maximes”. The study builds on the idea put forward by Gussenhoven (2002) and developed furher by Hirschberg (2002) of universal codes for how prosodic information is produced by the speaker and perceived by the listener.
Wichmann (2002) and Mozziconacci (2002) as well as Scherer (1996) also deal with the relations between prosody (f0 features in particular) and what can be described as “affective functions”. These researchers have made important contributions in this area; however, for a comprehensive survey of expressive speech research, see Mozziconacci (2002). Wichmann makes a distinction between ”ways of saying” (properties or states relating to the speaker) and “ways of behaving” (the speaker’s attitude to the listener ). “Ways of saying” includes first, how the speaker use prosody in itself – stress and emphasis, tonal features, speech rate, pausing etc – and second, the emotional coloring of speech ( e.g. ”happy”, ”sad”, “angry”) as well as states such as “excited”, “powerful” etc. Examples of “ways of behaving” are attitudes such as ”arrogant” and “pleading”. In addition, the speaker may use other means, argumentative and rhetorical, which may have impact on the listener. All these functions of prosody make it a complex, nuanced and powerful communicative tool.
To study the affective functions of prosody, auditive analyses must be combined with acoustic measurements (see e.g. Mozziconacci, 2002). Also, listeners’ impressions have to be categorized appropriately. A standard procedure is to have listeners judge samples of speech, choosing one of several possible alternatives for each sample. However, human speech very often conveys several states, attitudes and emotions at the same time and this without doubt is true for the often quite elaborated speech produced in the public domain. This complexity is examined in a study by Liscombe et al. (2003) through the use of multiple and continuous scales for rating emotions. In their study, the subjective ratings are also combined with acoustic analyses of prosodic features.

PRELIMINARY RESULTS AND STUDIES OF MY OWN IN THE AREA OF PUBLIC SPEECH

Strangert (1991a and b) as well as Strangert (1993) reported on studies of professional news reading. They revealed how an expert speaker relied on specific strategies to give emphasis to important information and to keep the attention of the listener, strategies that non-professional speakers seldom master to the same extent. These strategies were predominantly prosodic and included tempo variations, a specific type of pausing and a dynamic flow of speech with great f0 variations adjusted to the content of the message. A study by Horne et al. (1995) further dealt with pausing and final lengthening in broadcasts on stockmarket reports on Swedish Radio.
Other studies of mine, although focussing on read-aloud and spontaneous speech outside the public domain, are nevertheless relevant to the work planned here (see e.g. Strangert, 1991c, and other references in the application). This previous research has been undertaken within the framework of a number of earlier projects and has been widely published. It serves as reference points and will be used to illustrate differences compared to public speech.
There are, in addition, obvious points in common between the proposed project and the recently finished “Boundaries and groupings – the structuring of speech in different communicative situations”. This project included analyses of an interview with a female politician, focusing on fluency and pausing relative to the syntactic structuring. The purpose was not specifically to study public speech, but the results (see e.g. Heldner and Megyesi, 2003, Strangert 2004, Strangert and Carlson, 2004) may be assumed to reflect the fact that the speech was produced by a very experienced speaker. Although the speech was produced without a manuscript, it is heard as very well structured and the listener is not distracted despite a great number of hesitations and other types of disfluencies. The reason for this is most likely that the speaker relies on strategies that counteract such distraction, strategies assumed in “the commit-and-restore model” developed by the psycholinguist Herbert Clark and his colleagues (e.g. Clark and Wasow, 1998). According to this model, a speaker strives for ”continuity” (to produce entire syntactic constituents). An interruption within a constituent thus results in a violation of constituency, a “violation of continuity”. When the speaker stops speaking after the initial part of the constituent (often a function word), she/he makes “an initial commitment”, that is, the speaker makes it clear that she/he will go on speaking. In doing so, the speaker demonstrates not only the intention to proceed but also prevents others from taking over. This may be of great advantage in the public domain, where speakers often have to fight to keep the floor. Thus, there is good reason to use this model as a starting-point for the analysis of fluency vs. disfluency in public speech.
A detailed prosodic analysis of two skilled speakers has recently been undertaken (Strangert, 2005). The purpose was to identify prosodic features assumed to be characteristic for speakers capable of attracting the interest and attention of an audience, in other words characteristic for “good speakers”. The same material was used in previous studies of mine of professional news reading (Strangert, 1991, 1993) and the interview described above (Strangert, 2004, Strangert and Carlson, 2004), but the analyses was more detailed and covered aspects not previously reported. This study therefore should be seen a pilot project approaching the problems sketched in the current research plan.
The results (Strangert, 2005) demonstrate how the two (female) speakers, both with a reputation as very skilled representatives of their respective professions, rely on prosody to communicate their messages. For the news announcer, the informative aspects predominate. Prosody is used primarily to enhance what is important and the means to do so are pausing, a marked slowing-down before important words and maximal f0 variation. The speech is also generally dynamic with great variation in all prosodic dimensions. A similarly dynamic repertoire characterizes the politician, who is equally skilled at emphasizing. But the informative aspects are less central than for the news announcer; the focus is primarily on argumentation. The objective is to agitate and to convince, and the politician allows herself to be personal in a way that the news announcer is not (nor is supposed to be). In this, the politician succeeds by exploiting prosody to its maximum. She is, in addition, skilled in using different rhetoric devices, e.g. repetition combined with an efficient use of prosody to strengthen the rhetorical effects. The analyses also demonstrate how the speaker – through prosody – counteracts the interviewer’s attempts to break into the speech flow.

RESEARCH PLAN

YEAR 1: Collection and selection of public speech material, subjective ratings and initial prosodic acoustic analyses, recordings of non-public speech for comparisons with public speech.

The material for analysis will be selected from the collections in The Swedish National Archive of Recorded Sound and Moving Images (Statens ljud- och bildarkiv). It will primarily be speech of spontaneous character (interviews, debates etc) produced by experienced and skilled speakers, but read-aloud speech (e.g. prepared political speeches) may also be selected. To make sure that the material includes speech samples appropriate for specific rhetorical analyses, expertise in rhetoric (Anders Sigrell, see Personnel) will be consulted. A preparatory inventory has already been undertaken and contacts with The Swedish National Archive of Recorded Sound and Moving Images have shown that the neccessary material can be supplied in CD format for prosodic/acoustic analysis. The non-public material will be collected in parallel – recordings of speech over the telephone between close relatives. An earlier study using this approach is reported in Campbell and Mokhtari (2002). The recorded telephone material will be compared with the publicly produced speech, the reason being that speech produced in the family sphere can be assumed to share features of expressiveness with public speech produced by very skilled speakers (although there is no reason to believe that there is a total correspondence between them). Birgitta Hene (see Personnel) is responsible for the collection of the non-public speech (see Hene, 2005, including a plan for studying telephone conversations).
The first step of analysis will be auditive analyses and ratings of the material. The ratings concern prosodic features in the produced speech (fluency, dynamics of f0 and intensity, etc) and properties relating to the personality or states of the speaker (engaged, powerful, etc). Also the speaker’s attitude towards the listener (agitating, applying, ironic, etc) will be rated, cf. Wichmann (2002). In the planning of these experiments, work by Julia Hirschberg and her research team (e.g. Liscombe et al., 2003) will serve as a background. A visit to her laboratory at Columbia University, USA, is planned to take place before setting up the experiment; I have received an invitation from Julia Hirschberg to come and visit her for discussions about the ratings paradigm.
Efforts will be taken to select thoughtful and reliable participants in the experiments. As reliable data are indispensable and the experiments can be assumed to be both gruelling and time-consuming, the subjects will be paid.
The prosodic/acoustic analyses will be undertaken in parallel with, but primarily after, the rating experiments. The findings from these analyses will then be related to the rating data (also Year 2).

YEAR 2: Prosodic/acoustic analyses; manipulations and synthesis experiments, deepened analyses of prosody relative to specific rhetoric devices, comparisons with non-public speech.

The prosodic/acoustic analyses will continue and the results will be related to the subjective ratings. Fluency vs. disfluency and pausing will be analyzed and compared with previous studies (in particular Strangert, 2004, Strangert and Carlson, 2004) with the commit-and-restore model as its basis (Clark and Wasow, 1998). The analyses of subject ratings will be made with the work of Julia Hirshberg’s group as a background (Liscombe et al., 2003).
Experiments with manipulated speech may also be undertaken to study how prosody contributes to the impressions of listeners, e.g. the impression of a speaker as very skilled. Using synthesized speech, hypotheses based on the ratings and the acoustic analysis can be tested. Synthesis is also a neccessary approach for learning how expressions are encoded in speech according to e.g. Mozziconacci (2002).
Analyses of specific rhetorical devices will be undertaken in cooperation with Anders Sigrell. An example is irony, and in particular, how irony is expressed prosodically. This realates to “implicitness”, what is to be inferred by the listeners. A theoretical background is given in Sigrell (2001) which also includes a penetrating analysis of irony.
Finally, comparisons of the public and non-public conversations will be conducted in collaboration with Birgitta Hene. The analyses will primarily concern the prosodic/acoustic properties, but comparisons based on subjective judgements may be used as a complement.

PROJECT OUTCOMES

The findings of the project will be presented at national and international conferences. They will also be disseminated inside and outside the scientific community in other fora, e.g. lectures for students and or/the public.
If possible, efforts will be taken to raise funds for a workshop. The plan is to gather a restricted number of researchers (8-12, mainly from Sweden and the Nordic countries) with experience in research on public speech. The participants may include phoneticians, and researchers in the fields of rhetoric and media studies. The purpose will be to discuss the different approaches and to introduce the hitherto neglected prosody as an aspect relevant to these disciplines. Without doubt, such collaboration across the different fields will also contribute to deepen phonetic/prosodic analyses of expressive aspects of speech. This area has great potential. Today there is an immense interest in phonetics in emotional and other expressive aspects of speech, but the area has still only been partially explored. There is at the same time a willingness to cooperate on prosody expressed by representatives of the field of rhetoric. Plans to arrange a workshop are supported by Rolf Hedquist and Anders Sigrell in Umeå, both researchers specializing in rhetoric. Cooperation with rhetoricians in Umeå will also take the form of common seminars.

ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS

The material to be analyzed is speech produced by expert or otherwise skilled speakers from the collections of media material in The Swedish National Archive of Recorded Sound and Moving Images, primarily broadcasts from Swedish Radio, featuring individuals frequently appearing in public media. As such they are used to being critically examined in media, sometimes even concerning how they express themselves. Thus, it might be argued that – for scientific reasons – it would not be inappropriate to analyze the speech of these persons without asking their permission. The sole reason for including them as speakers is their role as representatives for experienced or skilled public speakers.
However, in case the preparatory committee takes the position that the selected speakers should be asked permission for using the material, this will be done. The same holds for ethical examination, if required.

GENDER PERSPECTIVES

Gender perspectives are not prominent in the planned research. My own previous studies in the area in question have been based solely on female speakers. It might be natural to proceed along this line. However, the final decision concerning the selection of speakers has to be based on several criteria in addition to gender. Therefore, the decision as to which speakers to include in the study must be postponed for now. Gender perspectives, however, will be taken into consideration when data from the project are related to other studies in the areas of expressive and public speech.

REFERENCES

- Andersson, H. 2002. TV:s nyhetsprogram som interaction (Television news as interaction). Diss. Institutionen för nordiska språk, Uppsala universitet.
- Braga, D. and Marques, M. A. 2004. The pragmatics of prosodic features in the political debate. Proc. Speech Prosody 2004, 321-324.
- Bruce, G. and Touati, P. 1992. On the analysis of prosody in spontaneous speech with exemplifi-cation from Swedish and French. Speech Communication 11, 453-458.
- Campbell, N. and Mokhtari, P. 2003. Voice quality: the 4th prosodic dimension. Proc. XIVth Int. Congr. of Phonetic Sciences, 2417-2420.
- Carlson, R., Granström, B., Heldner, M., House, D., Megyesi, B., Strangert, E. and Swerts, M. 2002. Boundaries and groupings – the structuring of speech in different communicative situations: a description of the GROG project, TMH-QPSR 44, 65-68.
- Clark, H. H. and Wasow, T., 1998. Repeating words in spontaneous speech. Cognitive Psychology 37, 201-242.
- Couper-Kuhlen, E. (ed.) 1996. Prosody in conversation. Cambridge: University Press.
Gussenhoven, C. 2002. Intonation and interpretation: Phonetics and phonology. Proc. Speech Prosody 2002, 11-13.
- Hene, B. 2005. Individers interaktion i telefonsamtal. Project proposal, submitted to The Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation.
- Hirschberg, J. 2002. The pragmatics of intonational meaning. Proc. Speech Prosody 2002, 65-68.
- Horne, M., Strangert, E. and Heldner, M. 1995. Prosodic boundary strength in Swedish: final lengthening and silent interval duration. Proc. XIIIth Int. Congr. of Phonetic Sciences, 170-173.
- Heldner, M. and Megyesi, B. 2003. Exploring the prosody-syntax interface in conversations. I: Proc. ICPhS 2003, 2501-2504.
- Hellspong, L. 1992. Konsten att tala. Handbok i praktisk retorik. Lund: Studentlitteratur.
- Johannesson, K. 1998/1990. Retorik eller konsten att övertyga. Stockholm: Norstedts Förlag.
- Jørgensen, C. Kock, C. and Rørbech, L.1994. Retorik der flytter stemmer. Köpenhamn: Gyldendal.
- Lindblad, I.-B. 1985. Lokalradiospråk (Local Radio Language). Diss. Umeå Studies in the Humanities 72. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International.
- Liscombe, J., Venditti, J. and Hirschberg, J. 2003. Classifying subject ratings of emotional speech using acoustic features. Proc. Eurospeech 2003, 725-728.
- Mozziconacci, S. 2002. Prosody and emotions. Proc. Speech Prosody 2002, 1-9.
- O’Connell, D. C. and Kowal, S. 2002. Political eloquence. In: The social psychology of politics, eds. Ottati, V. C. , Tindale, R. S., Edwards, J:, Bryant, F. B., Heath, L., O’Connell, D. C., Suarez-Balcazar, Y. and Posavac, E. J. New York: Kluwer.
- Scherer, K., R.1996. Adding the affective dimension; a new look in speech analysis and synthesis. Proc. 4th Int. Conf. Spoken Language Proc., Addendum, 20-23.
- Sigrell, A. 2001. Att övertyga mellan raderna. Diss. Åstorp: Rhetor förlag.
- Strangert, E. 1991a. Finns det en speciell uppläsningsstil för nyheter i radio och TV? In: Nordsvenska 8, eds. Fries, S., Hedquist, R. & Larsson, K., 30-40. Institutionen för nordiska språk, Umeå universitet.
- Strangert, E. 1991b. Phonetic characteristics of professional news reading. Papers from the Fifth National Phonetics Conference held in Stockholm, May 29-31, 1991. PERILUS XII, 39-42. Institute of Linguistics, University of Stockholm.
- Strangert, E. 1991c. Pausing in texts read aloud. Proc. XIIth Int. Congr. Phonetic Sciences, 238-241.
- Strangert, 1993. Speaking style and pausing. PHONUM 2, 121-137. Reports from the Department of Phonetics, University of Umeå.
- Strangert, E. 2004. Speech chunks in conversation: Syntactic and prosodic aspects. In: Proc. Speech Prosody 2004, Nara, Japan, 305-308.
- Strangert, E., and Carlson, R. 2004. On modeling and synthesis of conversational speech. Proc. Nordic Prosody IX, Lund, Sweden. In press.
- Strangert, E. 2005. Prosody in public speech: analyses of a news announcement and a political interview. Submitted.
- Strömquist, S. 1996. Talarskolan. Talprocessen – teori och tillämpning. Malmö: Gleerups.
- Touati, P. 1991. Temporal profiles and tonal configurations in French political speech. Working Papers 38, 205-219. Lund University, Department of Linguistics.
- Touati, P. 1993. Prosodic aspects of political rhetoric. In: Proceedings of an ESCA Workshop on Prosody, Sept 27-29, 1993, Lund, Sweden/Working Papers 41, 168-171. Lund University, Department of Linguistics.
- Wichmann, A. 2002. Attitudinal intonation and the inferential process. Proc. Speech Prosody 2002, 11-22.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

EVA STRANGERT

2005. “Prosody in public speech”. Analyses of a news announcement and a political interview. Unpublished manuscript, submitted.
2004. (With Carlson, R.) “On modelling and synthesis of conversational speech”. In: Proceedings of Nordic Prosody IX, August 2004, Lund. In press.
2004. “On modeling of conversational speech”. In: Proceedings of Fonetik 2004, Stockholm, May 26-28, 2004, 20-23.
2004. “Speech chunks in conversation: Syntactic and prosodic aspects”. In: Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2004, Nara, Japan, March 23-26 2004, 305-308.
2003. “Emphasis by pausing”. In: Proceedings of the 15th international Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Barcelona, 3-9 August 2003, 2477-2480.
2003. “Tonal and temporal manifestations of successively higher emphasis in two communicative contexts”. In: Proceedings of Fonetik 2003, PHONUM 9, 121-124. Reports in Phonetics, Umeå University.
2002. (With Carlson, R., Granström, B., Heldner, M., House, D., Megyesi, B.and Swerts, M.) “Boundaries and groupings - the structuring of speech in different communicative situations: a description of the GROG project”. TMH-QPSR, 44, 65-68.
2001. (With Heldner, M.) “Temporal effects of focus in Swedish”. Journal of Phonetics, 29, 329-361.
2000. (With Heldner, M.) “Focus detection using overall intensity and high frequency emphasis”. In: Proceedings Fonetik 99, Göteborg 2-4 juni 1999 (Gothenburg Papers in Theoretical Linguistics 81).
1999. (With Heldner, M. and Deschamps, T.) “A focus detector using overall intensity and high frequency emphasis”. In: Proceedings of the XIVth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, San Francisco, USA, August 1-7, 1999.
1998. (With Heldner, M.) “On the amount and domain of focal lengthening in Swedish two-syllable words”. In: Proceedings of Fonetik´98, 154-157. Stockholm University, Institute of Linguistics.
1998. (With Heldner, M.) “On the amount and domain of focal lengthening in two-syllable and longer Swedish words”. In: Proceedings of Fonetik´98, 134-137. Stockholm University, Institute of Linguistics.
1998. (With Heldner, M.) “On the amount and domain of focal lengthening in Swedish”. In: Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Spoken Language Processing, Sydney, Australia, 30 November-4 December, 1998, vol 7, 3305-3308.
1997. (With Heldner, M.) “The contribution of pitch movements to perceived focus”. PHONUM 4, 109-112. Reports from the Department of Phonetics, Umeå University.
1997. “Relating prosody to syntax: boundary signalling in Swedish”. In: Proceedings of the 5th European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology, vol 1, 239-242.
1997. (With Heldner, M. “To what extent is perceived focus determined by F0 cues?” In: Proceedings of the 5th European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology, vol 2, 875-877.
1996. (With Aasa, A.) “Evaluation of Swedish prosody within the MULTEXT-SW project.” Speech, Music and Hearing. Quarterly Progress and Status Report (TMH-QPSR) 2/1996, 37-40.
1996. (With Swerts, M, and Heldner, M.) “F0 declination in read-aloud and spontaneous speech”. In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Spoken language Processing, Philadelphia, USA, October 3-6, 1966, vol 3, 1501-1504.
1995. (With Heldner, M.) “Labelling of boundaries and prominences by phonetically experienced and non-experienced transcribers”. PHONUM 3, 85-109. Reports from the Department of Phonetics, Umeå University.
1995. (With Heldner, M.) “The labelling of prominence in Swedish by phonetically experienced transcribers”. In: Proceedings of the XIIIth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Stockholm, August 13-19, 1995, vol 4, 204-207.
1995. (With Horne, M.and Heldner, M.) “Prosodic boundary strength in Swedish: final lengthening and silent interval duration”. In: Proceedings of the XIIIth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Stockholm, August 13-19, 1995, vol 1, 170-173.
1994. (With Heldner, M.) “Prosodic labelling and acoustic data”. Working Papers 43, 120-123. Lund University, Department of Linguistics.
1993. (With Ejerhed, E. and Huber, D.) “Clause structure and prosodic segmentation”. In: Papers from the Seventh Swedish Phonetics Conference held in Uppsala, May 12-14, 1993, 81-84. Department of Linguistics, Uppsala University.
1993. (With Strangert, B.) “Prosody in the perception of syntactic boundaries”. In: Proceedings of the 3rd European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology, 1993, vol 2, 1209-10.
1993. “Speaking style and pausing”. PHONUM 2, 121-137. Reports from the Department of Phonetics, University of Umeå.
1992. “Prosodic cues to the perception of syntactic boundaries”. In: Proceedings of the 1992 International Conference on Spoken language Processing, Banff, Alberta, Canada, October 12-16, 1992, Vol 2, 1283-1285. Department of Linguistics, University of Alberta, Canada.
1991. “Where do pauses occur in speech read aloud?” In: Papers from the Twelfth Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics, Reykjavík, June 14-16, 1990, Ed. Sigurdsson, H. A., 403-414. Linguistic Institute, University of Iceland.
1991. ”Finns det en speciell uppläsningsstil för nyheter i radio och TV?” I: Nordsvenska 8, Eds. Fries, S., Hedquist, R. and Larsson, K., 30-40. Institutionen för nordiska språk, Umeå universitet.
1991. ”När, var och hur pauserar man i uppläst tal?” In: Förhandlingar vid Artonde sammankomsten för svenskans beskrivning, Uppsala den 25-26 oktober 1990. Svenskans beskrivning 18, 337-347. Lund University Press, Lund.
1991. “Phonetic characteristics of professional news reading.” In: Papers from the Fifth National Phonetics Conference held in Stockholm, May 29-31, 1991. PERILUS XII, 39-42. Institute of Linguistics, University of Stockholm.
1991. “Pausing in texts read aloud.” In: Proceedings of the XIIth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Aix-en-Provence, August 19-24, 1991, Vol 4, 238-241. Université de Provence, Service des Publications.
1990. “Pauses, syntax and prosody”. In: Nordic Prosody V, Papers from a Symposium, Eds. Wiik, K. and Raimo, I. Phonetics, 294-305. University of Turku.
1990. “Perceived pauses, silent intervals, and syntactic boundaries”. PHONUM 1, 35-38. Department of Phonetics, University of Umeå.


BIRGITTA HENE

1982. (With Holmgren, B.) ”Vi flytt int!”. Presens av olika verb samt preteritum av vara i standardspråken i Arvidsjaur och Skellefteå. I: C.-C. Elert och S. Fries (utg.), Nordsvenska. Språkdrag i övre Norrlands tätorter. Acta Universitatis Umensis 49. S 201-220
1984. ”Den dyrkade Lasse och stackars lilla Lotta. En syntaktisk-semantisk studie av personbeskrivande adjektiv och adverb i populära ungdomsböcker”. Acta Universitatis Umensis 64. (Doktorsavhandling)
1988. ”Attributiv ålder och predikativ glädje - om personbeskrivande adjektivs syntaktiska funktion”. I: Svenskans beskrivning 16. Universitetet i Linköping, Tema Kommunikation. S 202-219
1989. ”How to investigate the language proficiency of inter-country adoptees - a presentation of a work in progress”. I: B. Hammarberg (ed.), Language Learning and Learner Language. Scandinavian Working Papers on Bilingualism 8. Stockholms universitet, Centrum för tvåspråkighetsforskning. S. 35-48.
1990. ”Barns ordförklaringar - och ordböckers”. I: Svenskans Beskrivning 17. Åbo Academy Press. S 115-126
1992. (With Edlund, L.-E.) ”Lånord i svenskan. Om språkförändringar i tid och rum.” Wiken.
1993. ”Utlandsadopterade barns och svenska barns ordförståelse. En jämförelse mellan barn i åldern 10-12 år”. SPRINS-gruppen 41. Göteborgs universitet, Institutionen för svenska språket.
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2001. ”Natur och Kulturs Svenska Ordbok”. Stockholm: Natur och Kultur. (Som vetenskaplig ledare och författare till ordartiklarna för basorden).
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ANDERS SIGRELL

1993. ”Underförstådda argument och retorisk effekt”. Svenskans beskrivning 20, s. 341-349. Umeå: Lund University Press.
1995. ”The Persuasive Effect of Implicit Arguments in Discourse”. Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Argumentation, vol. 2, s. 151-158. Amsterdam: Sic Sat.
1995. ”Vad är underförstått? Ett förslag till typologi för det underförstådda”. Svenskans beskrivning 21, s. 241-250. Helsingfors: Lund University Press.
2001.”Att övertyga mellan raderna. En retorisk studie om underförståddheter i modern politisk argumentation”. Åstorp: Rhetor förlag.