Language and Speech (http://www.asel.udel.edu/lgsp/) will devote a special issue on Audiovisual Prosody. Guest editors for the special issue are Emiel Krahmer and Marc Swerts .

Traditionally, the study of prosody has focussed on suprasegmental features such as intonation (speech melody), rhythm, tempo, loudness, voice quality and pausing that are encoded in the speech signal itself. However, when people speak they generally do more than merely producing suprasegmental variations, they may also use facial expressions or arm and body gestures to support what they are saying. In recent years various researchers have started to explore the contribution of these visual cues to communication. There is a growing awareness that auditory and visual prosody are closely intertwined, and collectively provide utterances with 'extra' information that is often not explicitly contained in the lexical and syntactic make-up of a sentence, such as cues to information structure, feedback, turn-taking, or emotional or attitudinal aspects of utterances. This special issue aims to collect papers on all aspects of audiovisual prosody, covering work from different disciplines (including speech science, psychology, computer science and linguistics) to create a better understanding of how visual and auditory prosody connect, and what the main outstanding issues are. Here is a non-exhaustive list of topics that would fit the special issue:

- Functions of audiovisual prosody
- Automatic audiovisual analysis tools
- Relation between visual and auditory prosody
- Developmental aspects of audiovisual prosody
- Cross-cultural differences in audiovisual expressivity
- Audiovisual correlates of mood and emotion
- Psychological models for audiovisual speech processing

The time schedule for this special issue is the following:

- November 15, 2007: deadline for full paper submission
- February 15, 2008: reviews and editorial decisions sent to authors
- June 1, 2008: deadline for revised papers
- Special issue is scheduled to appear as Vol 52 (1&2) in early 2009

Prospective authors should submit their manuscripts online to the Language and Speech editorial office (see http://www.asel.udel.edu/lgsp/ForAuthor.html ), and should indicate at the end of their abstract that the manuscript is being submitted for the special issue. After submitting, authors may also send an email to the editorial office to confirm that their paper has been correctly assigned.

- Welcome - Background & Objectives - Executive Structure - Constitution - News - Conferences & Seminars - Prix Christian Benoît - Links - Mailing List -

This website created and maintained by Colin Schoknecht at MARCS Auditory Laboratories