Prosodische Universalien bei Diskurspartikeln

Recent prosodic research has shown that discourse particles such as hm or ah offer an optimal basis for exploring the functions of prosody in general. This study set out to answer four questions: are there prosodic universals in discourse particles, and if so, how many are there and which forms and functions do they have? These questions were analyzed using production and perception data of speakers from five different and non-related language families. The study consists of two parts. The first part aimed to gather spoken data and in doing so, create inventories of discourse particles from five different language families and then comparatively analyze the phonetic forms and phonological functions. The second part aimed to validate the functional categories, to which the units from the first part were allocated. Therefore, listeners’ statements on the functions from the first part were used to have naive speakers reproduce the phonetic forms.