The topic prominence in the speech of individuals with and without schizophrenia: an exploratory study

Abstract

This is an exploratory study that investigates the prosodic realization of syllables with functional prominence in individuals with and without schizophrenia, focusing on f0 variation and its role in signaling functional prominence. Using the Language into Act Theory (L-AcT), the study analyzes the prosodic prominence of the informational unit of Topic, which establishes the cognitive domain for interpreting the illocution and is characterized by functional prosodic prominence. Results indicate that individuals with schizophrenia exhibit significantly lower f0 variation in nuclear syllables of topic units compared to those without schizophrenia. Specifically, speakers in the C-ORAL-ESQ corpus produced fewer instances of nuclear syllables with a four-semitone variation than those in the C-ORAL-BRASIL corpus.