Book announcement: Incursões em torno do Ritmo da Fala
Incursões em torno do Ritmo da Fala
by Plínio A. Barbosa (plinio@iel.unicamp.br)
Campinas, Brazil: Pontes Editores.
www.ponteseditores.com.br
ponteseditores@ponteseditores.com.br
The book Incursões deals with all components (including their coupling relations) of a dynamical model of speech rhythm, which is named throughout the book the reference model for practical reasons. The computational-mathematical implementation of the model is couched on dynamical systems theory, and presupposes that the rhythmic system underlying speech communication has three levels of coupling at three distinct temporal scales. Seven hypotheses or properties of speech rhythm per se are sustained along the book: (1) speech rhythm is the result of the coupling between two components, a perception-oriented tendency to pattern structuring, implemented by the inter-relation between local syntactic information and a phrase stress oscillator, and a production-oriented regularity constraint, implemented by the oscillation of two components, a syllabic oscillator and a phrase stress oscillator; (2) both tendencies, to pattern formation, on the one hand, and to regularity, on the other hand, act at two distinct temporal scales, those of syllable-sized, and stress group-sized units; (3) the syllabic oscillator’ pulses are anchored at vowel onsets, implementing the carrier component of speech rhythm production/perception; (4) prosodic timing, specified by the coupled oscillators model, is functionally separated from the specification of intrinsic gestures in a gestural lexicon; (5) the reference model generates complex patterns of syllable-sized durations via the consequences of the phrase stress oscillator’s entrainment onto the syllabic oscillator. These patterns reproduce with precision the patterns of duration found on Brazilian Portuguese natural utterances; (6) speech rate, specified underlyingly by the inverse of the syllabic oscillator resting period, is a basic dynamical property of the model; (7) the model exhibits dynamical properties found in natural speech, such as adaptation, bifurcation, attraction to/repulsion from cyclic attractors. The great amount of natural data analysed and the lines of argumentation outlined throughout the book strongly suggest that the proposed model is a linguistically and biologically adequate model of speech.
