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Prosody across senses: Testing a reconceptualization of prosody as a modality-neutral component of language governing spoken, visual and tactile signals

Objective

In Bill Clinton’s famous assertion, “I did NOT have sexual relations with that woman,” he employed speech prominence and grouping cues—namely pitch, duration, and intensity—on the negative element to convey a counterexpectational meaning. Prosody functions as a central organizing mechanism in human speech, emphasizing and segmenting information through the use of prominence and grouping patterns, thereby strongly influencing language comprehension. Although primarily regarded as a unimodal phenomenon confined to the spoken signal, prosodic events frequently coincide with visual communicative cues, such as head or hand gestures, and also with tactile interactions.

PROSODY-SENSES seeks to transform our understanding of language prosody by fully integrating its sensory dimensions (spoken, visual, tactile). The project draws upon research in linguistics and cognitive sciences research, aiming to empirically test the groundbreaking proposal that prosody functions as a modality-neutral (or sensory-independent) component of language orchestrating in a flexible way how spoken, visual, and tactile signals express phrasal prominence and grouping across two main language modalities (spoken and sign languages). The proposal will be evaluated through dynamic analyses of acoustic, kinetic, and tactile pressure patterns of prosody across two strands. Strand 1 will analyze how spoken languages with different prosodic typologies (tonal and non-tonal) exploit the different sensory signals when expressing prosody, and strand 2 will examine their utilization in both sign language and tactile sign language, as employed by deaf and deafblind individuals.

This project aims to enhance our scientific understanding of human language by investigating its adaptability across various sensory signals and language modalities. It holds the potential to substantiate the modality-neutral hypothesis of prosody, thereby significantly advancing a multisensory and inclusive perspective of language.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

Keywords

Programme(s)

Topic(s)

Funding Scheme

HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants

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Call for proposal

(opens in new window) ERC-2025-ADG

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Host institution

UNIVERSIDAD POMPEU FABRA
Net EU contribution
€ 2 499 336,00
Address
PLACA DE LA MERCE, 10-12
08002 Barcelona
Spain
Region
Este Cataluña Barcelona
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost
No data

Beneficiaries (1)