- Instructors: Kristine Yu & Shota Momma
- Location: zoom
- Time: TTh, 2:30-3:45
- Office hours: by appointment
Course overview
Phonological and prosodic structures are critically involved in both understanding and speaking. There is a sizable body of literature investigating the role of prosodic and phonological structures in sentence comprehension research. However, how speakers generate phonological and prosodic structures and how phonological/prosodic structures shape sentence production mechanisms is less well-understood. In this course, building on recent models and findings on the relationship between prosody and sentence production, we aim to better understand how speakers generate prosodic structures, and how prosodic structures in turn shapes the architecture of sentence production mechanisms. Some issue we will discuss in the seminar includes (but not limited to):
- Sentence production is often modeled as involving a minimal look-ahead, but some prosodic phenomena span across multiple constituents. How do speakers reconcile this tension?
- How do syntactic planning and phonological/prosodic planning interact in sentence production?
- How is the variability in phonological/prosodic processes shaped by sentence production?
Course objectives
- To appreciate the current state-of-art research on prosody and sentence production.
- To be exposed to linguistic phenomena at the syntax-prosody interface and how they can be probed from a sentence production point of view (e.g., French liaison, English coronal flapping/tapping, deletion, and glottalization, tone sandhi, rhythm rule, syntactic alternations, reductions, argument structure).
- To gain hands-on experience in designing and running production experiments (online).
- To gain hands-on experience in extracting and analyzing prosody-related data.
Assignments
- Class presentation x 2 (20%)
- Lab report (10%)
- Final project paper (40%)
- Final project presentation (10%)
- Attendance (20%)
Schedule (tentative)
| Week | Topic | Reading |
|---|---|---|
| 1 (week of 8/24) | Where is (are) the prosody box(es) in the production model? | Levelt (1989): Chapter 10 Berg & Abd-El-Jawad (1996) Alderete et al. (2019) |
| 2 (week of 8/31) | What is (not) prosody? Syntax-prosody mismatches | Gussenhoven and Jacobs (2017), Ch. 12 Keating & Shattuck (2002) |
| 3 (week of 9/7) | Production Planning Hypothesis (PPH) | Wagner (2012) Kilbourn-Ceron (2018) |
| 4 (week of 9/14) | Production Planning Hypothesis (PPH) | McKenzie (2016) Kilbourn-Ceron et al. (2016) Kilbourn-Ceron (2017) |
| 5 (week of 9/21) | Units of production planning – boundaries | Himmelmann (2014) Tamminga (2018) |
| 6 (week of 9/28) | Units of production planning – stress and accents | Kratzer & Selkirk (2007) Irwin (2011) Gussenhoven (2011, under review) Tilsen (2012), Kim & Tilsen (2020) |
| 7 (week of 10/5) | Lab 1: “that” variation phonetic/phonological analysis | Momma & Wilson (2020) Praat demo |
| 8 (week of 10/12) | Prosody and (in-)flexibility in syntax | Selkirk (1996, 2003) Hirsch & Wagner (2015) Gahl and Garnsey (2004) Moore-Cantwell (2013) |
| 9 (week of 10/19) | Prosody and (in-)flexibility in syntax & Lab 2 discussion | Kandybowicz (2006) Ritchart & Goodall (2016) Zukowski & Larsen (2011) Straub et al. (2011) |
| 10 (week of 10/26) | Syntax-prosody mismatches and the architecture of sentence production revisited & Lab 2 discussion | Keating (2006) Shattuck-Hufnagel (2019) MacKenzie (2016) Tamminga et al. (2016) |
| 11 (week of 11/2) | Lab II – running speech production experiment online | Data analysis demo |
| 12 (week of 11/9) | Wrapping-up / buffer | |
| 13 (week of 11/16) | Student presentation |
Attendance policy
You are expected to attend all classes having read the required readings. You are responsible for material from missed classes.
Academic honesty and assignment policy:
For homework, it is totally fine to collaborate with other students for homework assignments. But please indicate who you collaborated with. You also must write your own solution and submit it. We ask you NOT to collaborate with other students for exams. Any deliberate plagiarism on exams will result in an F for the course. These cases will be referred to the Academic Honesty Board. For the University’s Academic Honesty policy and procedures, see: http://www.umass.edu/honesty/
Diversity Statement:
The University of Massachusetts Amherst is committed to providing an equal educational opportunity for all students. If you have a documented physical, psychological, or learning disability on file with Disability Services (DS), you may be eligible for reasonable academic accommodations to help you succeed in this course. If you have a documented disability that requires an accommodation, please notify me within the first two weeks of the semester so that we may make appropriate arrangements. For more information, consult the Disability Services website at http://www.umass.edu/disability/
Grading scale
| Percentage totals | Grade |
| 93-100% | A |
| 90-92% | A- |
| 87-89% | B+ |
| 83-86% | B |
| 80-82% | B- |
| 77-79% | C+ |
| 73-76% | C |
| 70-72% | C- |
| 67-69% | D+ |
| 63-66% | D |
| 60-62% | D- |
| 59% or below | F |
| Incomplete | INC |