This collection of original papers by eminent phoneticians, linguists and sociologists offers the most recent findings on phonetic design in interactional discourse available in an edited collection. The chapters examine the organization of phonetic detail in relation to social actions in talk-in-interaction based on data drawn from diverse languages: Japanese, English, Finnish, and German, as well as from diverse speakers: children, fluent adults and adults with language loss. Because similar methodology is deployed for the investigation of similar conversational tasks in different languages, the collection paves the way towards a cross-linguistic phonology for conversation. The studies reported in the volume make it clear that language-specific constraints are at work in determining exactly which phonetic and prosodic resources are deployed for a given purpose and how they articulate with grammar in different cultures and speech communities.

This collection of original papers by eminent phoneticians, linguists and sociologists offers the most recent findings on phonetic design in interactional discourse available in an edited collection. The chapters examine the organization of phonetic detail in relation to social actions in talk-in-interaction based on data drawn from diverse languages: Japanese, English, Finnish, and German, as well as from diverse speakers: children, fluent adults and adults with language loss. Because similar methodology is deployed for the investigation of similar conversational tasks in different languages, the collection paves the way towards a cross-linguistic phonology for conversation. The studies reported in the volume make it clear that language-specific constraints are at work in determining exactly which phonetic and prosodic resources are deployed for a given purpose and how they articulate with grammar in different cultures and speech communities.

Analyzing Sound Patterns is a clear and concise introduction to phonological phenomena, covering a wide range of issues from segmental to suprasegmental problems and prosodic morphology. Assuming no prior knowledge of problem solving, this textbook shows students how to analyze phonological problems with a focus on practical tools, methodology and step-by-step instructions. It is aimed at undergraduate and beginning graduate students and places an instructional focus on developing students' analytical abilities. It includes extensive exercises of various types which engage students in reading and evaluating competing analyses, and involves students in a variety of analytical tasks. This textbook: • is designed around related phonological problems and demonstrates how they are analyzed step by step • presents and compares competing accounts of identical problems, and discusses and evaluates the arguments that distinguish one analysis from another • details how a broad array of sound patterns are identified and analyzed.

Poets, academics, and those who simply speak a language are subject to mysterious intuitions about the perceptual qualities and emotional symbolism of the sounds of speech. Such intuitions are Reuven Tsur's point of departure in this investigation into the expressive effect of sound patterns, addressing questions of great concern for literary theorists and critics as well as for linguists and psychologists. Research in recent decades has established two distinct types of aural perception: a nonspeech mode, in which the acoustic signals are received in the manner of musical sounds or natural noises; and a speech mode, in which acoustic signals are excluded from awareness and only an abstract phonetic category is perceived. Here, Tsur proposes a third type of speech perception, a poetic mode in which some part of the acoustic signal becomes accessible, however faintly, to consciousness. Using Roman Jakobson's model of childhood acquisition of the phonological system, Tsur shows how the nonreferential babbling sounds made by infants form a basis for aesthetic valuation of language. He tests the intersubjective and intercultural validity of various spatial and tactile metaphors for certain sounds. Illustrating his insights with reference to particular literary texts, Tsur considers the relative merits of cognitive and psychoanalytic approaches to the emotional symbolism of speech sounds.

This book is a collection of studies providing a unique view on two central aspects of poetry: sounds and emotive qualities, with emphasis on their interactions. The book addresses various theoretical and methodological issues related to topics like sound symbolism, poetic prosody, and voice quality in recited poetry. The authors examine how these sound-related phenomena contribute to the generation of emotive qualities and how these qualities are perceived by readers and listeners. The book builds upon Reuven Tsur’s theoretical research and supplements it from an experimental angle. It also engages in methodological debates with prevalent scientific approaches. In particular, it emphasises the importance of proper theory in empirical literary studies and the role of the personal traits of the reader in literary analysis. The intended readership of this book consists mainly of literary scholars, but it might also appeal to researchers from disciplines such as linguistics, psychology, and brain science.

This collection of essays, originally published at different times, presents a coherent, systematic, and comprehensive theory of the work of literature and its major aspects. The approach, which may be called "Constructive Poetics," does not assume that a work of literature is a text with fixed structures and meanings, but a text that invites the reader to evoke or project a network of interrelated constructs, complementary or contradictory as they may be. The work of literature is not just a narrative, as studies in narratology assume, but a text that projects a fictional world, or an Internal Field of Reference. Meanings in a text are presented through the evocation of "frames of reference" (scenes, characters, ideas, etc.). Language in literature is double-directed: it relates the Internal Field to External Fields and vice versa. The essays explore the problems of fictionality, presentation and representation, metaphor as interaction between several frames of reference, the theory of "Integrational Semantics" in literary and other texts, the meaning of sound patterns in poetry, and the question of "literariness." This theory and its specific aspects were developed by the author in Israel in the 1960s and 1970s and lay at the foundations of the Tel-Aviv School of Poetics. Revived now, it resonates with the current mood in literary criticism.

The ten volumes of Handbook of Pragmatics Highlights focus on the most salient topics in the field of pragmatics, thus dividing its wide interdisciplinary spectrum in a transparent and manageable way. While the other volumes select specific philosophical, cognitive, grammatical, social, cultural, variational, or discursive angles, this fourth volume is dedicated to the empirical investigation of the way human beings organize their interaction in natural environments and how they use talk for accomplishing actions and their contexts. Starting from Goffman’s observation that interaction exhibits a structure in its own right that cannot be reduced to the psychological properties of the individual nor to society, it contains a selection of articles documenting the various levels of interactional organization. In addition to treatments of basic concepts such as sequence, participation, prosody and style and some topical articles on phenomena like reported speech and listener response, it also includes overviews of specific traditions (conversation analysis, ethnomethodology) and articles on eminent authors (Goffman, Sacks) who had a formative influence on the field.