The account of sound making in a population must lead us into a discussion about the prosodic forces that are present in the phenomenon of language production. We consider conventionalized sound production of natural activities exploited towards social purpose as already having prosodic features. Any vocalization that has not migrated into some other function is considered pre-prosodic.
Prosody usually refers to the aspect of language that are not adequately represented syntactically and not accounted for in semantic theory. Other aspects of linguistic interactions are also very important such as motor functions involved in vocalizing, perception mechanisms and all these aspects that are commonly referred to as body language. We often rely on these cues to ascertain the mood of a person of a situation. In this thesis, we refer to prosody with the implicit understanding that all these aspects are also included in the definition, in some fashion.
The standard definition of prosody includes pitch contour, which covers the frequencies of speech, stress, that is, volume varied to emphasize vocables, and lengthening, in which vocables are prolonged with sound. The role of prosody in uttering language is an intrinsic part of ``understanding'' it. Prosody affects the pragmatics of language, that is, aspects of language that distinguish mood such as interrogative;
You're leaving tomorrow?, indicative;
You're leaving tomorrow, I'm going with you, imperative; You're leaving tomorrow (as in, leave tomorrow)8.2.
Mood provide cues that disarm a syntactic expression from assertion. For example the if clause can modify a sentence by removing the effects of an assertion;
If you leave tomorrow, I will go with you.
There is no inference from the sentence that someone is leaving tomorrow for a certainty. The time scale that extends between pre-prosodic and prosodic forces is not clear; we can assume that the process was fostered over a long period of time.
The difficulty in pinpointing the critical state at which lexical vocabulary becomes functionalized is evident by the absence of data on the phenomenon. However, there are numerous examples that demonstrate how the breakdown of prosody brings about mutations in scope arrangements in previously functionalized language [33]. The consequence is a change in role for the connective vocabulary involved. The change is not quite as dramatic as in the change from lexical to functional but is none the less reminiscent.
There are various ways of disarming an expression. As we have mentioned, quotation is such a device, tense can also be used;
If it were cold, I would dress up. There is no assertion that it is, in fact, cold. Altering word order will also disarm expressions;
were I younger, I would.... Using a prefix such as if can disarm an expression without the subjunctive;
if you do this, I will.... Prosody plays a role in all cases, however order sensitive constructions are less reliant on prosody to produce specific effects compare to order sensitive constructions. If-then clauses are order sensitive; the if usually precedes the then, so prosody is not as indispensable. The order sensitive constructions usually occur in longer sentences and may be an answer to compensate for the breakdown of prosody in complex sentences. Prosody is stable in short constructions.
Chinese languages, for example, are a well known challenge for non-Chinese because of their tonal specificity. These languages are usually offset by a simple grammar that is fluid and that does not rely on the order of its vocables to be understood.
Prosody plays a syntactic role, beyond a certain limit of the song characteristic of speech. In Chapter Two we have demonstrated how the construction not (A unless B), in which the scope of the negation affects (A unless B) changes over time to exclude unless B. The construction is now commonly understood as (not A) unless B. In the presence of negation, the scope of the construction is shortened. The sentence
I will stay unless he leaves is of the kind (A unless B) and
I will not stay unless he leaves is an example of a change in scope arrangement of the kind (not A) unless B.
We have also demonstrated that the shortening effect is also evident in the forming of functional language. Most functionalized language descends from longer lexical vocables, as we have said, but descends from Old English butan; or is a remnant of other in which the has disappeared [33]. The shortening of functionalized language is an attempt to preserve a causal flow, carried partly by prosody, in a sentence.
The practice of quoting previously used syntactic expression with the addition of syntactic elements invariably produces new elongated syntactic environment. The efficacy of prosody to convey mood, scope arrangement, and so on, is stretched to its limit as syntactic constructions become longer. Linguistic phenomena such as the shortening of scope, the functionalization of vocables, the creation of order sensitive constructions less reliant on prosody are all attempts to preserve a causal flow necessary to the shareability of language.