A prosodic construction is a temporal configuration of prosodic
features that bears meaning. Prosodic features include pitch,
intensity (perceived as loudness), duration, creaky voice, breathy voice, and so on. These
can combine in specific patterns to convey meanings and attitudes like
contrast, complaint, mockery, losing interest in a topic, assessing something
positively, holding the turn, and so on.[1][2][3]
Lexically-bound constructions
Many prosodic constructions are associated specific word sequences.
the phrase "tell me about it" said as an ironic rejoinder, implying the speaker already knows from personal experience
For example the phrase tell me about it when used as an ironic
rejoinder is typically spoken slowly and with falling pitch, and with
an "assertive" initial stress on the word tell.[4] Some instances
also include nasality, creaky voice, narrow pitch range after the
initial stress, and a late peak on "tell", as heard in the example.
Another example is the word "awww" used to praise a baby as cute, where the prosody includes high pitch with a slight sag towards the middle, extreme lengthening, relative loudness, creaky voice, and nasality.[1]
General constructions
knock-knock, as the start of a jokepeek-a-boo, as might be said to an infant
Other prosodic constructions are "general prosodic constructions" that
can be "superimposed on" various verbal content.[5] An example is the Minor-Third Construction,
a common way to call to get someone's attention, as in
Isabel or Excuse me, or to cue
some action, as in go for it,
knock knock,
and peek-a-boo in infant-directed speech
.[6][1]
In addition to the salient pitch
downstep, this construction involves pitch high in the speaker's
range; flat pitch before and after the downstep; lengthening,
especially on the first syllable; and a clear, highly harmonic voice,
as opposed to a creaky or breathy one.[7] As another example, German rhetorical questions,
such as wer mag denn Fusspilz? (who wants athlete's foot?)
A rhetorical question in German: Wer mag denn Fusspilz? (Who wants athletes foot?)
can be lexically identical to sincere questions, but often use a prosodic construction with slow speaking rate, breathiness after the first words, and a low final pitch.[8]
↑Lehmann, Claudia (2024). "Multimodal constructions revisited. Testing the strength of association between spoken and non-spoken features of Tell me about it". Cognitive Linguistics. 35: 407–437.
↑Claudia Lehmann (2024). "The prosody of irony is diverse and sometimes construction-specific". In Marcel Schlechtweg (ed.). Interfaces of Phonetics 38. pp.281–308.
↑Fernald, Anne (1989). "Intonation and communicative intent in mothers' speech to infants: Is the melody the message?". Child Development. 6: 1497--1510.
↑Day-O'Connell, Jeremy (2012). "Speech, song, and the minor third: An acoustic study of the stylized interjection". Music Perception. 30 (5): 450. doi:10.1525/mp.2013.30.5.441.
↑Jana Neitsch; Oliver Niebuhr (2019). Questions as prosodic configurations: How prosody and context shape the multiparametric acoustic nature of rhetorical questions in German. 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. pp.2425–2429.