Editing Paralanguage (section)

==Aspects of the speech signal==

=== Perspectival aspects ===
Speech signals arrive at a listener's ears with acoustic properties that may allow listeners to identify location of the speaker (sensing distance and direction, for example). [[Sound localization]] functions in a similar way also for non-speech sounds. The perspectival aspects of lip reading are more obvious and have more drastic effects when head turning is involved.

=== Organic aspects ===
The [[speech organ]]s of different speakers differ in size. As children grow up, their organs of speech become larger, and there are differences between male and female adults. The differences concern not only size, but also proportions. They affect the pitch of the [[human voice|voice]] and to a substantial extent also the [[formant|formant frequencies]], which characterize the different [[Phone (phonetics)|speech sounds]]. The organic quality of speech has a communicative function in a restricted sense, since it is merely informative about the speaker. It will be expressed independently of the speaker's intention.

=== Expressive aspects ===
Paralinguistic cues such as loudness, rate, pitch, pitch contour, and to some extent formant frequencies of an utterance, contribute to the emotive or attitudinal quality of an utterance.  Typically, attitudes are expressed intentionally and emotions without intention,{{citation needed|date=April 2012}} but attempts to fake or to hide emotions are not unusual.{{citation needed|date=April 2012}}
 
Consequently, paralinguistic cues relating to expression have a moderate effect of semantic marking. That is, a message may be made more or less coherent by adjusting its expressive presentation. For instance, upon hearing an utterance such as "I drink a glass of wine every night before I go to sleep" is coherent when made by a speaker identified as an adult, but registers a small semantic anomaly when made by a speaker identified as a child.<ref>Van Berkum, J. J., Van den Brink, D., Tesink, C. M., Kos, M., & Hagoort, P. (2008). The neural integration of speaker and message. ''Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience'', 20, 580–591.</ref> This anomaly is significant enough to be measured through [[electroencephalography]], as an [[N400 (neuroscience)|N400]]. Autistic individuals have a reduced sensitivity to this and similar effects.<ref>Groen, W. B., Tesink, C., Petersson, K. M., Van Berkum, J., Van der Gaag, R. J., Hagoort, P. and Buitelaar, J. K. (2010). Semantic, factual, and social language comprehension in adolescents with autism: an fMRI study. ''Cerebral Cortex'', 20(8), 1937–1945.</ref>{{Failed verification|date=August 2021|reason=No behavioral difference was detected, relevance of study results to paralinguistics is only speculative.}}

[[Emotional tone of voice]], itself paralinguistic information, has been shown to affect the resolution of [[lexical ambiguity]]. Some words have homophonous partners; some of these homophones appear to have an implicit emotive quality, for instance, the sad "die" contrasted with the neutral "dye"; uttering the sound /dai/ in a sad tone of voice can result in a listener writing the former word significantly more often than if the word is uttered in a neutral tone.<ref>Nygaard, L. C., Lunders, E. R. (2002). [https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.3758/BF03194959.pdf Resolution of lexical ambiguity by emotional tone of voice]. ''Memory & Cognition'', 30(4), 583–593.</ref>

=== Linguistic aspects ===
Ordinary [[phonetic transcription]]s of utterances reflect only the linguistically informative quality. The problem of how listeners factor out the linguistically informative quality from speech signals is a topic of current research.

Some of the linguistic features of speech, in particular of its [[prosody (linguistics)|prosody]], are paralinguistic or pre-linguistic in origin. A most fundamental and widespread phenomenon of this kind is described by [[John Ohala]] as the "frequency code".<ref>Ohala, J. J. (1984) An ethological perspective on common cross-language utilization of F<sub>0</sub> of voice. ''Phonetica, 41'', 1–16. {{doi|10.1159/000261706}}.</ref> This code works even in communication across species. It has its origin in the fact that the acoustic frequencies in the voice of small vocalizers are high, while they are low in the voice of large vocalizers. This gives rise to secondary meanings such as "harmless", "submissive", "unassertive", which are naturally associated with smallness, while meanings such as "dangerous", "dominant", and "assertive" are associated with largeness. In most languages, the frequency code also serves the purpose of distinguishing questions from statements. It is universally reflected in expressive variation, and it is reasonable to assume that it has [[Phylogenetics|phylogenetically]] given rise to the [[sexual dimorphism]] that lies behind the large difference in pitch between average female and male adults.

In text-only communication such as email, chatrooms and [[instant messaging]], paralinguistic elements can be displayed by [[emoticon]]s, font and color choices, capitalization and the use of non-alphabetic or abstract characters. Nonetheless, paralanguage in written communication is limited in comparison with face-to-face conversation, sometimes leading to misunderstandings.