Categories and gradience in intonation: evidence from linguistics and neurobiology

Multiple cues interact to signal multiple functions in intonation simultaneously, which makes intonation notoriously complex to analyze. The Autosegmental-Metrical model for intonation analysis has proved to be an excellent vehicle for separating the components, but evidence for the phonetics/phonology dichotomy on which it hinges has proved elusive. Advocating a multidisciplinary approach, this paper outlines a new research project which combines traditional behavioural experiments with neuro-linguistic data to advance our understanding of the linguistic representation and neural correlates of intonation.

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