Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on prosodic patterns. Along with the fast development of IT and computer science, many studies have adopted an experimental and computational approach in prosody research. The book explains about the interface between morphosyntax and prosody. It has been widely observed that phonological structure is sensitive to morphosyntactic structure, but what elements of phonological structure and how the phonology are influenced by morphosyntactic structure are still open to debate. Prosody is one of the core components of language and speech, which indicates information about syntax, turn-taking in conversation, types of utterances, such as questions or statements. Prosody plays an important role in human speech perception. The prosodic hierarchy and the prosodic units presented in Selkirk and Nespor and Vogel have stimulated a large amount of research with regard to prosodic studies in a variety of fields.